Fig. 1.

Fabrication and characterization of the wear debris. (A) Schematic illustration of materials preparation. The average tensile strength (B) for the PEEK, PEEK-ZnO, PE, and PE-ZnO groups was 79.20 MPa, 77.37 MPa, 35.63 MPa, and 32.11 MPa, respectively, while the average elastic modulus (C) was 3.901 GPa, 4.127 GPa, 1.642 GPa, and 1.868 GPa, respectively. (D) The stress-strain curves of different groups. (E) The average weight content distribution of the Zinc element in the PEEK-ZnO and PE-ZnO groups was 11.87 % and 8.705 %, respectively. Each bar represents the average of three independent samples. (F) SEM images of the fabricated materials. (G) SEM images of the wear particles. (H) EDS mapping and spectrum of different elements in different wear particles. FT-IR (I) and XRD (J) patterns of the wear particles. Broad XPS spectrum of the fully scanned region (K) and the (L) Zn 2p region of the wear particles.