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Titanium-nickel shape memory alloy (SMA) has good biomedical application value as an implant. Alloy corrosion will promote the release of toxic nickel ions and cause allergies and poisoning of cells and tissues. With this background, surface modification of TiNi SMAs using TiC-powder-assisted micro-electrical discharge machining (EDM) was proposed. This aims to explore the effect of the electrical discharge machining (EDM) parameters and TiC powder concentration on the machining properties and surface characteristics of the TiNi SMA. It was found that the material removal rate (MRR), surface roughness, and thickness of the recast layer increased with an increase in the discharge energy. TiC powder’s addition had a positive effect on increasing the electro-discharge frequency and MRR, reducing the surface roughness, and the maximum MRR and the minimum surface roughness occurred at a mixed powder concentration of 5 g/L. Moreover, the recast layer had good adhesion and high hardness due to metallurgical bonding. XRD analysis found that the machined surface contains CuO2, TiO2, and TiC phases, contributing to an increase in the surface microhardness from 258.5 to 438.7 HV, which could be beneficial for wear resistance in biomedical orthodontic applications.

An intrinsic topological metal state is found in the T-graphene, a monolayer with both the time-reversal symmetry and the four-fold symmetry. The state distinguishes itself by the nontrivial electric polarization from the ordinary metals and features with two local edge states in the corresponding nanoribbons. The topological metal state is confirmed as a transition state bridging the ordinary metal state and the topological insulator state when the relative neighboring hoppings change in the lattice. The topological nature is further verified by checking the robustness of transport property against randomly-introduced strong disorders. The fact that the multiple topological states indexed by different parameters coexist in such a practical system shows a broad prospect in versatile topological transport devices.