Processing and degradation behavior of porous magnesium scaffold for biomedical applications

Abstract

Porous magnesium has the potential to be used as degradable bone scaffolds. In this study, porous magnesium scaffolds were fabricated through powder metallurgy route utilizing spherical naphthalene particle as porogen. Porogen was removed at 120 °C for 24 h followed by sintering at 550 °C for 2 h in argon atmosphere. Micro-computed tomography (micro CT) results indicated that scaffolds have interconnected porous structure with an equivalent pore diameter of nearly 60 µm. Compressive strength of the scaffolds was found in the range of 24 ± 4.54 MPa to 184 ± 9.9 MPa and decreased with increasing porogen content. In vitro degradation study in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) showed that scaffold degradation behavior was governed by its porosity content. Our results indicate that modulating the porogen content we can tailor the mechanical and degradation behavior of the Mg scaffolds to the application need.