Investigation of New Bionic Therapeutic Lubricants

Based on the bionic artificial joint system, new therapeutic bionic lubricants not only for artificial joints lubrication but also for the treatment of particle-induced osteolysis are developed and investigated. In this study, their tribological characteristics and mechanisms are studied. The tribological experimental results show that the therapeutic lubricants have the best anti-wear performance among the lubricants tested in the experiments, such as hyaluronic acid (HA), bovine serum et al. It is found that there is some membrane self-assembled on the surface of the cup which may give a likely answer to the high lubricating performance of the therapeutic lubricants. The calculated film thickness of therapeutic lubricants is about 0.310 μm. The result indicates it is still in the boundary lubrication state. The preliminary biological experiments show that therapeutic lubricants have good biocompatibility. More tests are needed to clarify the form of the membrane and the medical performance of the therapeutic bionic lubricants towards the undesired reactions induced by the wear debris.