Abstract
The article presents an original way of getting porous and mechanically strong CaSiO3-HAp ceramics, which is highly desirable for bone-ceramic implants in bone restoration surgery. The method combines wet and solid-phase approaches of inorganic synthesis: sol-gel (template) technology to produce the amorphous xonotlite (Ca6Si6O17·2OH) as the raw material, followed by its spark plasma sintering–reactive synthesis (SPS-RS) into ceramics. Formation of both crystalline wollastonite (CaSiO3) and hydroxyapatite (Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2) occurs “in situ” under SPS conditions, which is the main novelty of the method, due to combining the solid-phase transitions of the amorphous xonotlite with the chemical reaction within the powder mixture between CaO and CaHPO4. Formation of pristine HAp and its composite derivative with wollastonite was studied by means of TGA and XRD with the temperatures of the “in situ” interactions also determined. A facile route to tailor a macroporous structure is suggested, with polymer (siloxane-acrylate latex) and carbon (fibers and powder) fillers being used as the pore-forming templates. Microbial tests were carried out to reveal the morphological features of the bacterial film Pseudomonas aeruginosa that formed on the surface of the ceramics, depending on the content of HAp (0, 20, and 50 wt%).
Highlights
Sustainable development of modern biotechnology in the field of regenerative and reconstructive bone surgery is governed by the quality of the available biomaterials, a specific class of systems with a unique set of physico-chemical and mechanical characteristics, as well as biocompatibility [1,2]
The method involves sol-gel synthesis of the starting raw material in the form of an amorphous composite material based on xonotlite and its subsequent spark plasma sintering yielding ceramic wollastonite
Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) showed that the HAp phase formation in the resulting ceramics can be initiated by the solid-phase interaction of the reaction mixture (CaO and CaHPO4) in the spark plasma heating by the “in situ” reaction directly at the moment of sintering of the amorphous xonotlite
Summary
Sustainable development of modern biotechnology in the field of regenerative and reconstructive bone surgery is governed by the quality of the available biomaterials, a specific class of systems with a unique set of physico-chemical and mechanical characteristics (chemical inertness, microstructural diversity, mechanical strength, fracture resistance, and durability), as well as biocompatibility (non-toxicity, bio-inducivity, bio-conductivity, and bio-resistivity) [1,2]. Our early studies have identified the above-described prospects of SPS application for the synthesis of nanostructured bioceramic wollastonite [42,43,44,45] with its bioactive properties being assessed “in vivo” [46] These studies showed several original methods for developing a porous structure of the ceramics that is similar to the texture of bone tissue by introducing various porous templates. SPS-RS is based on the chemical interaction between the starting components of the sintering mixture under the influence of spark plasma, resulting in a new type of the final product [47,48,49] This approach allows one to directly obtain different materials with unique. The proposed non-standard SPS-RS approach can pave the way to fabrication of biocompatible ceramics for bone tissue engineering; contributing another flexible strategy for the synthesis of biomaterials
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