Abstract
The manufacture of polyetheretherketone/hydroxyapatite (PEEK/HA) composites is seen as a viable approach to help enhance direct bone apposition in orthopaedic implants. A range of methods have been used to produce composites, including Selective Laser Sintering and injection moulding. Such techniques have drawbacks and lack flexibility to manufacture complex, custom-designed implants. 3D printing gets around many of the restraints and provides new opportunities for innovative solutions that are structurally suited to meet the needs of the patient. This work reports the direct 3D printing of extruded PEEK/HA composite filaments via a Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) approach. In this work samples are 3D printed by a custom modified commercial printer Ultimaker 2+ (UM2+). SEM-EDX and µCT analyses show that HA particles are evenly distributed throughout the bulk and across the surface of the native 3D printed samples, with XRD highlighting up to 50% crystallinity and crystalline domains clearly observed in SEM and HR-TEM analyses. This highlights the favourable temperature conditions during 3D printing. The yield stress and ultimate tensile strength obtained for all the samples are comparable to human femoral cortical bone. The results show how FFF 3D printing of PEEK/HA composites up to 30 wt% HA can be achieved.
Highlights
Polyetheretherketone (PEEK) is a high-performance thermoplastic polymer of particular interest for replacing metals in orthopaedic implant applications due to its excellent biocompatibility, radiolucency, low specific gravity (1.3 g/cm3), and its favourable mechanical properties [1]
The filaments used for the 3D Printing (3DP) process were produced as solid and continuous filaments, with minimal porosity as reported in Table A1 (Appendix A). 3D printing of this continuous filament brought about a slight increase in the sample porosity, but this was observed to be well below 1% of the total volume, as highlighted in Table A1 (Appendix A) and as is a consequence of the Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) 3D printing technique, whereby the material to be printed is laid down in lines throughout the test specimen
PEEK and HA are both well-established biomaterials that are both currently used for orthopaedic implant devices and through the results demonstrated here, it is not envisaged that FFF of PEEK/HA composites manufactured under similar processing conditions as utilised in this study, will unduly affect their properties, and their biocompatibility, and prevent their approval for use in orthopaedic implants
Summary
Polyetheretherketone (PEEK) is a high-performance thermoplastic polymer of particular interest for replacing metals in orthopaedic implant applications due to its excellent biocompatibility, radiolucency, low specific gravity (1.3 g/cm3), and its favourable mechanical properties [1]. Further to this it has a lot of potential for ‘made-to-measure’ implants produced through additive manufacturing (AM) approaches, namely 3D Printing (3DP) [2,3]. This could be achieved via coating the PEEK with HA [6,7] or manufacturing a PEEK/HA composite material and ensuring that the bioactive HA component is available on the surface of the material to deliver the desired osseointegration [8]
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