Investigation of wettability and wear properties on 3D printed Polylactic acid/Molybdenum disulfide-Silicon carbide polymeric composite for sustainable biomedical applications

In the present work, investigations of the wettability, wear, and morphological study on 3D-printed polylactic acid (PLA)/molybdenum disulfide (MoS2)-silicon carbide (SiC) based composite have been performed. In the first stage, the PLA/MoS2-SiC composite was fabricated from the different types of filaments of 1.75 ± 0.10 mm size by taking MoS2-SiC as reinforcement at various extrusion temperatures (150°C–160°C) and screw rotational speed (3–7 r/min) of the extruder setup. The Taguchi L9 orthogonal array was used to design the experiments for 3D printing by varying the filament type, range of nozzle temperature (200°C–210°C), and infill density (40%–90%). The pin-on-disk (POD) setup was used for measuring specific wear rate (SWR) and showed the lowest value of 0.00141 g/N-m when composites were 3D printed by taking filaments manufactured at the parametric combination of 160°C extruder temperature and 7 r/min rotational speed, while 3D printed at 210°C nozzle temperature and 40% infill density. Contact angle (CA) values indicated that the reinforcement of MoS2 and SiC in PLA resulted in hydrophilic surface formation due to morphology and increased roughness (including mean roughness (Sa), mean root square of the Z data (Sq), and the highest peak (Sz)). The significantly increased surface free energy (SFE) of MoS2-SiC-reinforced PLA composite compared to pure PLA was reported which makes the prepared composite a promising candidate to be used for biocompatible implants with high wear resistance.