Titanium (Ti) and its alloys are widely used in orthopedic applications, including total hip and knee replacements, bone plates, and dental implants, because of their superior biocompatibility, bioactivity, corrosion resistance, and mechanical robustness. These alloys effectively overcome several limitations of conventional metallic implants, such as 316L stainless steel and Co-Cr alloys, particularly with respect to corrosion, fatigue performance, and biological response. However, dense Ti alloys possess a relatively high elastic modulus, which can cause stress shielding in load-bearing applications. This challenge has motivated significant research toward engineered porous Ti structures that exhibit a reduced and bone-matched modulus while preserving adequate mechanical integrity. This review provides a comprehensive examination of powder metallurgy and additive manufacturing approaches used to fabricate porous Ti and Ti-alloy scaffolds, including additive manufacturing and different powder metallurgy techniques. Processing routes are compared in terms of achievable porosity, pore size distribution, microstructural evolution, mechanical properties, and biological outcomes, with emphasis on the relationship between processing parameters, pore architecture, and functional performance. The reported findings indicate that optimized powder-metallurgy techniques can generate interconnected pores in the 100–500 μm range suitable for osseointegration while maintaining compressive strengths of 50–300 MPa, whereas additive manufacturing enables the precise control of hierarchical architectures but requires careful post-processing to remove adhered powder, stabilize microstructures, and ensure corrosion and wear resistance. In addition, this review integrates fundamental aspects of bone biology and bone implant interaction to contextualize the functional requirements of porous Ti scaffolds.

In this investigation, an attempt was made to develop a new high-strength and high-ductility aluminum metal–matrix composite. It was achieved by incorporating ceramic reinforcement into the metal which was formed in situ from a polymer by pyrolysis. A crosslinked PMHS polymer was introduced into commercially pure aluminum via friction stir processing (FSP). The distributed micro- and nano-sized polymer was then converted into ceramic particles by heating at 500 °C for 10 h and processed again via FSP. The produced composite showed a 2.5-fold increase in yield strength (to 119 MPa from 48 MPa) and 3.5-fold increase in tensile strength (to 286 MPa from 82 MPa) with respect to the base metal. The ductility was marginally reduced from 40% to 30%. The increase in strength is attributed to the grain refinement and the larger ceramic particles. High-temperature grain stability was obtained, with minimal loss to mechanical properties, up to 500 °C due to the Zenner pinning effect of the nano-sized ceramic particles at the grain boundaries. Fractures took place throughout the matrix up to 300 °C. Above 300 °C, the interfacial bonding between the particle and matrix became weak, and fractures took place at the particle–matrix interface.

The present work is an effort to develop a set of newer aluminum alloys with a minor amount of alloying additions such as Co, Sc and Zr to pure Al in order to achieve higher strength along with a reasonable tensile ductility and improved microstructural stability at elevated temperatures. The alloys were melted using vacuum arc melting and were produced in rectangular slabs by suction casting. The slabs were cold rolled at room temperature up to ~80% reduction followed by direct aging at two different temperatures of 375 °C and 450 °C for 24 h. The effects of alloying additions, cold rolling and subsequent thermal aging were investigated by detailed microstructural examination and tensile testing at room temperature. Microstructural analysis revealed that the alloy contained significant volume fraction of second phase particles such as Al₉Co₂, Al₃Sc and Al₃(Sc_1-xZr_x) and were preferentially distributed in supersaturated equiaxed cells of Al matrix. The existence of Al₃(Sc_1-xZr_x) precipitates together with large fraction of Al₉Co₂ phase led to higher yield strengths of ~180-250 MPa and 17-20% tensile elongation. Electron backscattered diffraction observations showed equiaxed cells extensively deformed columnar grains and subgrain formation within the elongated grains in the rolling direction. The cold rolled plus aged samples exhibited a major fraction of rotated cube texture along with improved microstructural stability after high-temperature aging. This could be related to the existence of fine and stable Al₉Co₂ phase and Al₃(Sc_1-xZr_x) precipitates, which control grain growth and thereby these alloys thermally stable at high temperatures.