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 (MoS 2 )-silicon carbide (SiC) based composite have been performed. In the first stage, the PLA/MoS 2 -SiC composite was fabricated from the different types of filaments of 1.75 ± 0.10 mm size by taking MoS 2 -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 MoS 2 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 MoS 2 -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.