Topography and wettability characterization of surfaces manufactured by SLM and treated by chemical etching

Selective Laser Melting process represents an interesting opportunity in the biomedical field to fabricate customized implants. However, the surface roughness of components obtained through additive manufacturing is a major limitation and affects the surface wettability. In the present work, chemical etching is adopted to deal with such an issue. To do so, the effects of chemical etching parameters (such as immersion time and composition of the solution) on the surface roughness, weight loss and wettability is analyzed. Different samples (obtained through different printing orientations) are considered. The tests show that the roughness and the wetting of the surfaces are improved thanks to chemical etching. As a major result, the most influencing parameters on surface wetting are two: the roughness and the material properties (which vary with samples depth).