Ion Implantation of Radioisotopes for Tracing Prosthetic Wear

J. WARNER; L. G. GLADKIS; R. VIANDEN; M. F. DEL GROSSO; H. TIMMERS

Australia

Conferencia; 6th Australian Conference on Nuclear and Complementary Techniques of Analysis; 2009

As an alternative to the established 7Be radioisotope tracing technique, the direct implantation of 111In for wear studies of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene has been developed. Using this new approach the wear-in phase can be studied and debris transport traced. This has been demonstrated quantitatively for a wheel-on-plate system. For this system, the abrasive wear dispersed to the lubricant is only a small fraction of the wear debris transport and constitutes particles which drop out from an equilibrated debris exchange between the articulating surfaces.