Wear resistant UHMWPE with improved mechanical properties by high temperature melting and subsequent irradiation
writer：2. Fu, J.; Ghali, B. W.; Lozynsky, A. J.; Oral, E.; Muratoglu, O. K.
keywords：UHMWPE, wear, irradiation, implant
source：期刊
specific source：Polymer 2011 52 1155-1162
Issue time：2011年
The goal of this study was to create wear resistant ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) with improved strength and toughness. It was previously demonstrated that high temperature melting (HTM) of UHMWPE at 280~320 C improved its toughness without detrimentally affecting its wear resistance. We hypothesized that radiation cross-linking after high temperature melting could further improve the wear resistance of UHMWPE, and the loss in toughness by radiation cross-linking could be compensated by the improved toughness achieved by the high temperature melting prior to irradiation. In this work, we demonstrated that irradiation after HTM generated UHMWPE with improved toughness compared to the irradiated UHMWPEs without HTM, partly due to the low cross-link density of irradiated HTM UHMWPE. At a given cross-link density, irradiated HTM UHMWPEs showed higher wear resistance than irradiated UHMWPE. Therefore, successive HTM and radiation cross-linking strategy is
promising to create UHMWPE materials with low wear and improved mechanical properties for total joint implants.