Friction and Adhesion in Porous Biomaterial Structure

The paper presents short review of different aspects of the introduction of porosity into the bulk biomaterial and effects on different material characteristics, especially related to friction and adhesion. Nowadays, there is a great interest to investigate relations between porosity, different mechanical responses due to controlled topography and cell responses generated accordingly. Examples of current investigations of custom developed scaffolds for tissue engineering related to cell seeding and hip stem component are shown. Friction, adhesion and adhesive forces are briefly defined as related to porous material structures and the relevance of nano- and micro- level surface layers in such structures. Patterning techniques and micro-fabrication techniques for production of controlled and random porous surface layers are given. Influence of porosity on adhesion and friction is presented through several existing experimental results. However, there is still general lack of data related to many aspects of these novel porous materials and structures.