Scientists from the university participating in the world-class REC "Engineering of the Future" State University analyzed the use of magnesium alloys in medicine and described the properties safe for the human body bioresorbable materials.

Over the past decades, research activities in the field of creating bioresorbable magnesium alloys have significantly expanded and led to many exciting results. There are hundreds of articles devoted to this topic, and dozens of reviews.

The director of the TSU Research Institute of Progressive Technologies, Professor Dmitry Merson, told about how the material of TSU researchers differs from everything already written. Under his leadership, scientists of Togliatti State University are engaged in the creation of new magnesium-based materials. In particular, the alloy developed at TSU will be used in the manufacture of implants for traumatology and orthopedics. This year, the university will establish the production of these medical devices on the site of its own innovative technopark in partnership with Medical Trading Company LLC (St. Petersburg).

– Magnesium in its pure form is not used for the manufacture of bioresorbable implants – only alloys based on it, – explains Dmitry Merson. – At the same time, there are quite a lot of doping systems in the world, and one of the most promising is magnesium–zinc-calcium, since it contains elements that are absolutely safe for the human body.

We mainly develop this system in our scientific team, and our review is dedicated to it. There are a number of problems in the development of magnesium alloys, about which little has been written in the scientific literature so far.

Most researchers either do not take them into account, or deliberately bypass them. It is on these problems that the emphasis is placed in the work of materials scientists of the TSU NIIPT.

– First of all, this is the lack of a single standard for determining the rate of dissolution of implants, which does not allow comparing the results obtained by different researchers, – says Dmitry Merson.

– In addition, there are practically no results on corrosion fatigue, that is, the effect of a cyclically varying load on the behavior of implants in a biologically active environment, and it is in such conditions that implants work.

Also in their material, TSU specialists pay attention to the danger of underestimating such a phenomenon as stress corrosion cracking.

– This is a sudden complete destruction of a product under load in a corrosive environment. The traditional way of dealing with this phenomenon – providing a significant margin of safety for bioresorbable structures – does not work, since during the dissolution of the implant, the working cross–section is thinned and the margin of safety is reduced," emphasizes Dmitry Merson.

The article, prepared by materials scientists of Togliatti State University, was published in the journal of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). It is a highly rated peer-reviewed open access journal of materials science and engineering (level Q1) based in Basel (Switzerland). The cost of publication in it is 2,600 Swiss francs (more than 200 thousand rubles at the exchange rate on February 10, 2023. – Ed.). Taking into account the authority of the authors in the scientific world and the significance of what is described in the material, the editor of the issue offered TSU researchers to post the article for free.

*Alloying – the addition of impurities to the composition of materials to change (improve) the physical and/ or chemical properties of the base material.