The nanomechanical characterization and tensile test of polymer nanocomposites for bioimplants

Abstract

Nanoindentation is a powerful technique to determine various mechanical properties of materials at the nanoscale, such as for example young's modulus and hardness. Polyetheretherketone (PEEK) is a material that is widely used in medicine because its mechanical properties show excellent similarity to those of human bone. PEEK is a synthetic polymer being used increasingly as a implant material due to its iso-elastic nature and enhanced mechanical properties. This study presents the effect of PEEK specimens incorporated with (0, 0.5,1&1.5) wt% nano hydroxyapatite (nHA) and nano titanium oxide (nTiO2) processed by compounding and hot press. The main objective of this study is to conduct a manufacturing experiment nano polyetheretherketone composite for characterization of its mechanical properties using a tensile test and nanoindentation techniques of mechanical tests. The results of mechanical tests exhibit improvments of youngs modulus, hardness and ultimate tensile strength at 1.5 wt % for two types of reinforcement but the higher values obtained when reinforced by (nHA). In addition the elastic modulus determined by the nanoindentation technique differs from the results obtained from tensile test by (14-38)%. The results also showed that the highest value obtained for ultimate tensile strength and hardness was (79.457Mpa, 0.3256743 GPa) respectively.