title: Study of urological devices coated with fullerene-like nanoparticles.
abstract: Insertion of endoscopes and other medical devices into the human body are ubiquitous, especially among aged males. The applied force for the insertion/extraction of the device from the urethra must overcome endoscope-surface-human-tissue interactions. In daily practice a gel is applied on the endoscope surface, in order to facilitate its entry into the urethra, providing also for local anesthesia. In the present work, a new solid-state lubricant has been added to the gel, in order to reduce the metal-urethra interaction and alleviate the potential damage to the epithelial tissue. For that purpose, a urethra model was designed and fabricated, which allowed a quantitative assessment of the applied force for extraction of the endoscope from a soft polymer-based ring. It is shown that the addition of MoS2 nanoparticles with fullerene-like structure (IF-MoS2) and in particular rhenium-doped nanoparticles (Re:IF-MoS2) to Esracain gel applied on the metal-lead reduced the friction substantially. The Re:IF-MoS2 showed better results than the undoped fullerene-like nanoparticles and both performed better than the gel alone. The mechanism of friction reduction is attributed to fullerenes' ability to roll and act as a separator between the active parts of the model.
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Ohad
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Goldbart
authors.forename: Olga
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Elianov
authors.forename: Dmitry
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Shumalinsky
authors.forename: Leonid
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lobik
authors.forename: Shmuel
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cytron
authors.forename: Rita
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rosentsveig
authors.forename: H Daniel
authors.initials: HD
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.forename: Reshef
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tenne
mesh_terms: D004129:Dimethylpolysiloxanes / Q000737:chemistry; D004864:Equipment and Supplies; D037741:Fullerenes / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans; D053768:Metal Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry / Q000648:ultrastructure; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D012211:Rhenium / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D004129:Dimethylpolysiloxanes; D037741:Fullerenes; C013830:baysilon; D012211:Rhenium