Tribocorrosion of Diamond Like Carbon (DLC) coatings for biomedical applications

Abstract

Tribocorrosion has arisen as one of the most important material degradation processes in biomedical applications; thus, the improvement of the materials used in hip or knee prosthesis is very relevant. The aim of this project is to test the outstanding properties of the diamond like carbon material as a coating; a comparison between CoCrMo with several types of DLC as ta-C, a-C:H and metal doped with Ti and Si. Also different deposition methods will be compared like Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) and Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition (PECVD). For this purpose, electrochemical techniques in NaCl, phosphate buffer solution (PBS) and Albumin at 37ºC will be investigated. Samples characterization will be done by means of scanning electron microscope (SEM), confocal microscope and Hardness Vickers.