The Microstructural Evolution and Corrosion Behavior of Zn-Mg Alloys and Hybrids Processed Using High-Pressure Torsion

Zinc (Zn) alloys, particularly those incorporating magnesium (Mg), have been explored as potential bioabsorbable metals. However, there is a continued need to enhance the corrosion characteristics of Zn-Mg alloys to fulfill the requirements for biodegradable implants. This work involves a corrosion behavior comparison between severe-plastic-deformation (SPD) processed cast Zn-Mg alloys and their hybrid counterparts, having equivalent nominal compositions. The SPD processing technique used was high-pressure torsion (HPT), and the corrosion behavior was studied as a function of the number of turns (1, 5, 15) for the Zn-3Mg (wt.%) alloy and hybrid and as a function of composition (Mg contents of 3, 10, 30 wt.%) for the hybrid after 15 turns. The results indicated that HPT led to multimodal grain size distributions of ultrafine Mg-rich grains containing MgZn2 and Mg2Zn11 nanoscale intermetallics in a matrix of coarser dislocation-free Zn-rich grains. A greater number of turns resulted in greater corrosion resistance because of the formation of the intermetallic phases. The HPT hybrid was more corrosion resistant than its alloy counterpart because it tended to form the intermetallics more readily than the alloy due to the inhomogeneous conditions of the materials before the HPT processing as well as the non-equilibrium conditions imposed during the HPT processing. The HPT hybrids with greater Mg contents were less corrosion resistant because the addition of Mg led to less noble behavior.