INVITED: BioTribology of Thin Film Coatings

Thin film coatings offer potential solutions to wear/corrosion of total hip replacements.  There are several tribological interfaces that can potentially benefit from having a hard, wear resistant layer that could act as a barrier to ion release.  The synergistic processes of wear and corrosion have been shown to reduce the lifetime of total hip replacements; as the population ages and the need for replacement joints increases year on year then surface engineering strategies which can improve the life of the component would be very welcome. In this paper the testing methodologies and the results from an extensive study of wear/corrosion of metal and thin film PVD coated components is presented.  The potential for coatings to provide a step-change in system performance is discussed.  The focus is on silicon nitride coatings as a durable and biocompatible thin film solution for the bearing surface and taper junction.