This specification covers the material requirements for high-purity, dense aluminum oxide for load bearing surgical implant applications.

Formerly under the jurisdiction of Committee F04 on Medical and Surgical Materials and Devices, this specification was withdrawn in March 2009 in accordance with section 10.5.3.1 of the Regulations Governing ASTM Technical Committees, which requires that standards shall be updated by the end of the eighth year since the last approval date.

This specification covers the material requirements for high-purity, dense aluminum oxide for load bearing surgical implant applications. It mainly addresses qualification of the material as delivered to the parts manufacturer, and does not cover finished parts such as femoral heads, acetabular inserts, dental implants, and the like. The material requirements to which the aluminum oxides shall conform are physical properties such as bulk density, weight, and grain size; chemical composition that shall be measured either by ICP-AES, XRF, or mass spectroscopy; and mechanical properties such as compressive strength, flexural strength, elastic modulus, Vickers hardness, and Weibull modulus.

1.1 This specification covers the material requirements for high-purity, dense aluminum oxide for surgical implant applications.

1.2 The values stated in SI units are to be regarded as the standard.

1.3 Aluminum oxide in accordance with Section 3 has been demonstrated to exhibit a well-characterized biological response which is less than that exhibited by the reference materials cited and tested in Practice F361 or equivalent (1 to 6).