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.