A novel tribological study on DLC-coated micro-dimpled orthopedics implant interface

作者：Choudhury Dipankar^*; Urban Filip; Vrbka Martin; Hartl Martin; Krupka Ivan

来源：Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, 2015, 45: 121-131.

DOI：10.1016/j.jmbbm.2014.11.028

• Hip joint prosthesis
• Friction coefficient
• Wear debris
• Diamond like carbon
• Micro dimple

This study investigates a tribological performance of diamond like carbon (PLC) coated micro dimpled prosthesis heads against ceramic cups in a novel pendulum hip joint simulator. The simulator enables determining friction coefficient and viscous effects of a concave shaped specimen interface (conformal contact). Two types of DLC such as hydrogenated amorphous carbon (a-C:H) and tetrahedral amorphous carbon (Ta-C) and one set of micro dimple (diameter of 300 gm, depth of 70 Inn, and pitch of 900 gm) were fabricated on metallic prosthesis heads. The experiment results reveal a significant friction coefficient reduction to the 'dimpled a-C:H/ceramic' prosthesis compared to a 'Metal (CoCr)/ceramic' prosthesis because of their improved material and surface properties and viscous effect. The post-experiment surface analysis displays that the dimpled a-C:H yielded a minor change in the surface roughness, and generated a larger sizes of wear debris (40-200 nm sized, equivalent diameter), a size which could be certainly stored in the dimple, thus likely to reducing their possible third body abrasive wear rate. Thus, dimpled a:C-H can be used as a 'metal on ceramic hip joint interface', whereas the simulator can be utilized as an advanced bio-tribometer.

• 出版日期2015-5