For biomedical application in the field of artificial hip joints diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings have been widely studied due to their excellent mechanical, tribological and biological properties. At present the lifetime of such joints is just about 15 years and some (10%) of patients require second replacementent. In consequence, it is currently an urgent need to extend the life expectancy especially for younger patients under 50 years old. As is well known, the wear particles as the main factor limiting the life expectancy of hip joints have attracted more and more interest, in particular, the amount of wear particles. However, it is rare to see the reports about wear particle size distribution.
The key contribution of this dissertation is a new approach-design of wear particle size distribution, which is an initial and important step of DLC research in artificial hip joint field. In addition, DLC coating is grown by a new deposition technique based on the vacuum arc, which allows the transition from cathodic to anodic operation mode by adjusting anode-cathode diameter ratio. The main aim of this dissertation is to investigate the influence of deposition parameters on the wear particle size distribution, as well as the structure and tribological properties of DLC coatings. It is shown that it is possible to reduce the wear particle size by optimization of the deposition parameters.