Low Friction Wear Resistant Sputtered Carbon Coatings for Biomedical Applications

Sputtered carbon coatings have been reported to have excellent tribological properties (low friction coefficient and wear rate) and therefore have the potential to be used as hard, solid lubricant, wear resistant coatings. During a research program aimed at reducing the wear of UHMWPE hip joint prostheses by-coating the metal femoral head, a new type of carbon coating was developed which now has the trade name Graphit-iC(TM). This coating gave exceptional friction and wear results in simple laboratory tests against coated and uncoated metal counterfaces, but not against UHMWPE as originally intended.