For artificial joint implants, it is necessary to reduce friction and wear at the orthopedic bearing surface for the smooth motion of the joints. As natural human joints are covered with a nanoscale hydrated brush-like layer which provides essential lubrication, grafting charged polymers from surfaces should lead to a geometry similar to that found in natural cartilage and provide lubricating properties due to the steric repulsion between opposing brush layers keeping the two surfaces separated. In this contribution, we present an entirely new approach to the formation of polymer brushes that mimics the mechanism of growth found in nature. We fabricate uniform dense brushes on the surface of a porous membrane by diffusing the monomer through the membrane, thus creating growing brushes supplied with monomer from the base. Results from Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy; water contact angle measurements, atomic force microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy show the successful fabrication of much more uniform polymer brushes on the substrate.

Mimicking articular cartilage with polymer brushes grown by a surface diffusion approach

251st National Meeting (2016)

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