Some biological surfaces especially synovial joints show excellent aqueous lubrication and very long service life under high loads and complex body environments

which are attributed to self-adaptive articular cartilage and bottle-brushes like biomacromolecules in synovia.Surface grafted polymer brushes are used to imitate the excellent lubrication of synovial joints.Here is a brief review of progress on polymer brushes for aqueous lubrication

especially on lubrication mechanism of different polymer brushes (e.g.biomacromolecules

polyelectrolyte brushes

polyzwitterion brushes and neutral polymer brushes).Finally

some problems in current research and perspectives in the future on biomimetic aqueous lubrication are discussed.