Sliding wear behaviour of an electrochemically modified austenitic high-nitrogen steel surface

Wear debris from artificial metallic implant joints is known to provoke detrimental foreign-body reactions in the surrounding human tissue. Although commonly used biotolerant metals generate only a little amount of particles, wear is still a major cause for concern. It is the aim of this work to evaluate the sliding wear resistance of a topologically modified high-nitrogen austenitic stainless steel. A disc-on-pin test in self-mating contact is performed in distilled water. Submicron particles are trapped by the structured topography and form together with the plastically deformed metal a hybrid surface which has the potential to significantly improve the tribological behaviour of the tested high-nitrogen steel.