Cerium-activated non-basal slip improves ductility of magnesium alloy

Biodegradable magnesium (Mg) possesses satiable elastic modulus and favorable biocompatibility, but poor plasticity limited its clinical application in bone repair field. In this work, rare-earth cerium (Ce) was introduced in Mg powder via mechanical alloying (MA). Under sustainable impact of huge compelling force, the Mg and Ce powders welded together and generated much crystal defects, which reduced the energy barrier of solute atom diffusion, thus obtaining Mg-Ce supersaturated solid solution powder. Afterwards, the MA-processed powder was shaped into parts by powder metallurgy. The supersaturated Ce weakened the texture and triggered dislocation on pyramidal planes, which accelerated the cross-slip of dislocation and gave birth to sufficient slip system during deformation. As a result, the Mg-Ce/MA part showed a high ductility with elongation of ∼18.1%. In addition, the in vitro cell testing showed that Ce addition exerted no obvious negative effect on the biocompatibility. This work showed the feasibility of MA and powder metallurgy in fabricating high performance RE-Mg alloy towards to future biomedical application.