Experimental approach towards the water contact angle value on the biomaterial alloy Ti6Al4V

In the biomedical field, water contact angle is a useful gauge to follow how a biomaterial surface would interact with the surrounding water-like physiological environment. Ti6Al4V alloy is widely used in orthopedic applications. Nevertheless, the values of its water contact angle reported in the literature show a large dispersion, from 40° up 80°. However, in addition to the expected dependence of the surface wettability on preliminary treatments, the values of the water contact angle on the pristine Ti6Al4V alloy suffers from an important variability and lack of reproducibility. The present research pays attention to this difficulty and proposes a simple experimental procedure to ensure adequate contact angle reproducibility. Controlled passivation growth in mild underwater conditions of freshly polished disks, followed by ultrasonic washing, avoiding the rubbing of the surface, gives average water contact angles of 80° with very low standard deviations also among samples from the same batch.