Feasibility of Laser Surface Texturing for Friction Reduction in Surgical Blades

Trauma resulting from surgical blade friction can cause several complications and delay the recovery time of a patient. In order to attain optimal tribological properties, an 8 ps pulsed 532 nm Nd:YVO4 laser was used to ablate the cutting edge surface of surgical blades to create micro dimples of ∼110 μm in diameter and ∼30 μm in depth. Additionally, certain arrays of dimples endured an extra laser ablation operation to add a fillet to the dimple rims with the hope of reducing stress concentrations during tissue cutting and reducing friction even further. These surface textures were experimentally investigated through cutting experiments on phantom tissue material. Ultimately, the blades with the cutting surface texture that employed blended dimple rims showed a substantial reduction in friction forces when cutting phantom tissue samples.