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Mechanical properties and biocompatibility of melt processed, self-reinforced ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene
- Source :
- Biomaterials. 35:6687-6697
- Publication Year :
- 2014
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2014.
-
Abstract
- The low efficiency of fabrication of ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE)-based artificial knee joint implants is a bottleneck problem because of its extremely high melt viscosity. We prepared melt processable UHMWPE (MP-UHMWPE) by addition of 9.8 wt% ultralow molecular weight polyethylene (ULMWPE) as a flow accelerator. More importantly, an intense shear flow was applied during injection molding of MP-UHMWPE, which on one hand, promoted the self-diffusion of UHMWPE chains, thus effectively reducing the structural defects; on the other hand, increased the overall crystallinity and induced the formation of self-reinforcing superstructure, i.e., interlocked shish-kebabs and oriented lamellae. Aside from the good biocompatibility, and the superior fatigue and wear resistance to the compression-molded UHMWPE, the injection-molded MP-UHMWPE exhibits a noteworthy enhancement in tensile properties and impact strength, where the yield strength increases to 46.3 ± 4.4 MPa with an increment of 128.0%, the ultimate tensile strength and Young's modulus rise remarkably up to 65.5 ± 5.0 MPa and 1248.7 ± 45.3 MPa, respectively, and the impact strength reaches 90.6 kJ/m(2). These results suggested such melt processed and self-reinforced UHMWPE parts hold a great application promise for use of knee joint implants, particularly for younger and more active patients. Our work sets up a new method to fabricate high-performance UHMWPE implants by tailoring the superstructure during thermoplastic processing.
- Subjects :
- Materials science
Thermoplastic
Biocompatibility
Cell Survival
Surface Properties
Biophysics
Modulus
Biocompatible Materials
Bioengineering
Cell Line
Biomaterials
Mice
chemistry.chemical_compound
Crystallinity
X-Ray Diffraction
Tensile Strength
Ultimate tensile strength
Animals
Composite material
Mechanical Phenomena
chemistry.chemical_classification
Calorimetry, Differential Scanning
Izod impact strength test
Polyethylene
Molding (decorative)
chemistry
Mechanics of Materials
Ceramics and Composites
Polyethylenes
Knee Prosthesis
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 01429612
- Volume :
- 35
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Biomaterials
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....c542c9783deecf4710b7da0bd3c7bd4a