Current Understanding of Ti Anodisation: Functional, Morphological, Chemical and Mechanical Aspects

This paper provides an overview of the current understanding of the Ti anodisation process. As compared to other valve-metals, Ti exhibits several significant differences regarding its anodisation behaviour, the most important one being the marked semiconducting character of its anodic oxide. In the first part of this paper, a general introduction to anodisation processes is given and theoretical models describing the growth kinetics, breakdown and internal stress development in anodic oxide films are presented. In the second part, the peculiarities of Ti regarding the anodisation behaviour are discussed extensively. In particular, the influence of the main experimental parameters (metal substrate, electrolyte and growth rate) on both the anodisation process and the functional, morphological, chemical and mechanical characteristics of the anodic films is reviewed.