Fabrication and characterisation of porous, calcium enriched coatings on titanium after plasma electrolytic oxidation under DC regime

The purpose of this work is to produce and characterize (chemical composition and roughness parameters) porous coatings enriched in calcium and phosphorus on the titanium (CP Titanium Grade 2) by plasma electrolytic oxidation. As an electrolyte, a mixture of phosphoric acid H₃PO₄ and calcium nitrate Ca(NO₃)₂·4H₂O was used. Based on obtained EDS and roughness results of PEO coatings, the effect of PEO voltages on the chemical composition and surface roughness of porous coatings was determined. With voltage increasing from 450 V to 650 V, the calcium in PEO coatings obtained in freshly prepared electrolyte was also found to increase. In addition, the Ca/P ratio increased linearly with voltage increasing according to the formula Ca/P = 0.035·U+0.176 (by wt%) and Ca/P = 0.03·U+0.13 (by at%). It was also noticed that the surface roughness increases with the voltage increasing, what is related to the change in coating porosity, i.e. the higher is the surface roughness, the bigger are pores sizes obtained.