Investigations on Synthesis of Porous NiTi Shape Memory Alloy Structures Using Selective Laser Melting Techniques

Additive manufacturing is an attractive and promising manufacturing technology in fabricating nitinol (NiTi) structures. NiTi physical mixture was synthesized from elemental powder mixture of nickel and titanium by selective laser melting process. The NiTi physical mixture was used to fabricate porous nitinol structure. The composition of intermetallic phases obtained in SLM-synthesized samples has been studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique and the microstructure of the deposited samples is probed through scanning electron microscopy (SEM). It has been observed that the physical mixture NiTi-5P (5 laser scans) exhibits superior textural properties (97% enhancement in porosity) as compared to NiTi-3P (3 laser scans).