Fabrication and characterization of wollastonite-titanium porous scaffold for pharmaceutical application: Representative volume element simulation

Abstract

The use of modern methods for the fabrication of porous scaffolds has led to the construction of complex composite scaffolds with a very similar bone structure. One of these useful methods is called the space holder method which uses the NaCl microparticles as space agents. In this study, the novel calcium silicate bioceramic (Wollastonite: WS) particles are used as the based ceramic with the addition of various amounts of titanium particle (TiO2-TiNP). The combination of WS-TiNP with various amounts of Ti-NP (pure WS (S1), WS-5 wt% TiO2 (S2), WS-10 wt% TiO2 (S3), and WS-15 wt% TiO2 (S4)) composed with NaCl space agent under 200 MPa using space holder technique is performed. The materials characterization is performed using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis for morphological and phase analysis. After analyzing the mechanical features such as compressive strength and fracture toughness, the biological properties such as biodegradation rate and bioactivity are evaluated after 28 days of soaking in phosphate buffer saline (PBS) and simulated body fluid (SBF), respectively. As the porosity value affects the mechanical performance the Abaqus software was utilized to predict the atomic structure of the porous bio-composite WS-TiNP. The obtained results indicate that the compressive strength and porosity increased and decrease from 5.2 to 8.5 MPa and 62% to 45%, respectively. Also, the Abaqus models and experimental data have an error of 18% to evaluate the influence of the porosity on the compressive strength. The observation indicate that the sample with 10 wt% TiO2 has a potential for pharmaceutical and maxilla facial application.