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Chen-Ying Su [1] and Chien-Wei Kuo [2] and Hsu-Wei Fang [1; 2]
Academic Editor: Cho-Pei Jiang
1, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, National Taipei University of Technology, No. 1, Sec. 3, Zhongxiao E. Rd., Taipei 10608, Taiwan, ntut.edu.tw
2, Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Nanomedicine, National Health Research Institutes, No. 35, Keyan Road, Zhunan Town, Miaoli County 35053, Taiwan, nhri.org.tw
Received Jul 17, 2017; Revised Sep 12, 2017; Accepted Sep 19, 2017
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
Many reasons can cause the damage of joints such as aging, stress, trauma, or body weight. When the joints are damaged severely resulting in pain and even difficulties in movements, total joint arthroplasties (TJAs) are recognized as the ultimate effective treatment currently. The performance of TJAs depends on their tribological properties, and the wear particles that are generated from the tribological process play a key role in the lifetime of artificial joint system [1]. It has been shown that wear particles induce biological responses and even cause osteolysis and bone resorption [2]. One of polymers, polyetheretherketone (PEEK), has been introduced as bearing materials for TJAs because of its resistance to fatigue strain [3, 4]. Therefore, it is critical to prove whether PEEK wear particles could induce biological responses in vivo.
The current method of generating wear particles is employing joint stimulators, which are cost- and time-consuming [5]. Moreover, many factors can affect the wear rate including contact pressures, lubricants, sliding conditions, or surface geometries and it is difficult to investigate many factors by joint simulators [6]. The wear rate is correlated with the sizes and morphology of wear particles, and it has been shown that the size of PEEK wear particles is responsible for inducing biological responses [7]. Therefore, a rapid method of generating various wear particles for investigating PEEK particle-induced biological responses is required.
In this study, we developed an accelerated wear testing protocol to investigate the effects of different contact pressures and different lubricants on the wear rate and morphology of PEEK particles. By rubbing a PEEK pin on different dimensions of the microfabricated surfaces (Figure 1(a)),...