Abstract
•Effect of high energy Cl-ion on the surface properties of polyethylene was studied.•Compositional transformation in polymeric material after ion bombardment was observed.•Remarkable variation in biocompatibility parameters was investigated.•Ion bombardment fabricating shock absorber material able to absorb high dynamic load.
In this work, polyethylene (PE) samples were subjected to 9 MeV Cl+2 ions with fluences ranging from 1 × 1013 to 5 × 1014 ion/cm2. Rutherford back scattering spectrometry (RBS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) spectroscopy and Vicker’s micro-hardness (Hv) techniques were used to investigate the compositional transformation, changes in the structure, optical and surface hardness of bombarded samples. The adhesion parameters were analyzed using the contact angle measurements. The obtained results showed that the ion irradiation caused a decrease in the crystallinity of polyethylene and increase in absorption of oxygen on the polymer surface as well. The absorption edge shifted towards the red shift as Cl-ion fluence increases. It was found that the hardness and adhesion parameters increase with increasing the ion beam fluence.