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Study of the electrochemical dissolution behavior of Nitinol shape memory alloy in different electrolytes for micro-ECM process

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Abstract

Nickel-titanium alloy (Nitinol) is an excellent shape memory alloy (SMA) for microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS) particularly in biomedical applications owing to its three excellent features shape memory effect (SME), superelasticity, and biocompatibility. The temperature-dependent material transformation properties of Nitinol SMAs make conventional machining difficult. Micro-ECM, a non-conventional machining process for conductive materials regardless of their strength and hardness, has the potential to fabricate microfeatures on Nitinol. This study presents the investigation on the electrochemical dissolution behavior of Nitinol in different electrolytes for micro-ECM. The influence of electrolytes on the nature of dissolution of Nitinol was studied by fabricating microchannels in three levels of parameters containing applied voltage and electrolyte concentration. The first three electrolytes were all aqueous neutral electrolytes, i.e., NaCl, NaNO3, and NaBr. The aqueous NaNO3 was successful in fabricating microchannels at all levels of process parameters. However, aqueous electrolytes form relatively a huge amount of sludge on the machined surface reducing both dissolution efficiency and machining accuracy. Thus, ethylene glycol-based NaNO3 was used to fabricate microchannels with lower depth overcut (DOC), width overcut (WOC), and length overcut (LOC) with respect to aqueous NaNO3 electrolyte. The potentiodynamic polarization (PDP) tests of Nitinol through cyclic voltammetry (CV) shows passive dissolution in aqueous electrolyte and active dissolution in non-aqueous electrolyte.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, West Bengal, 721302, India

    Abhijeet Sethi, Biswesh Ranjan Acharya & Partha Saha

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  1. Abhijeet Sethi
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  2. Biswesh Ranjan Acharya
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  3. Partha Saha
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Mr. Abhijeet Sethi, Mr. Biswesh Ranjan Acharaya, and Dr. Partha Saha. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Mr. Abhijeet Sethi, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Partha Saha.

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Sethi, A., Acharya, B.R. & Saha, P. Study of the electrochemical dissolution behavior of Nitinol shape memory alloy in different electrolytes for micro-ECM process. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 121, 7019–7035 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-09802-z

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