Synthesis of Bioactive Glass using Cellulose Nano Fibre Template

Abstract

Bioactive glass is one of the biomaterials that is used as a bone graft. The important property desired for a bone graft material is to have well suited porosity to enable cell penetration and enhance oxygen and nutrient exchanges. The common methods to produce bioactive glass are melting and sol-gel methods. Melting method is operated at a temperature higher than 1300 °C; the sol-gel method, on the other hand, is usually operated at a much lower temperature, i.e. in the range of 600 – 800 °C. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of using cellulose nano-fiber (CNF) template on the properties of the synthesized bioactive glass. Hypothetically, the templating process will create channels within the bioactive glass structures, which improves both its porosity and the interstitial network. In this study, SiO2–CaO–P2O5–Na2O bioactive glass (BG) was prepared via sol-gel method. The effects of the manipulated parameters on the morphology, chemical properties, porosity and crystallinity of BG were assessed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis, Energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis and X-ray diffraction (XRD). It was found that the sintering temperatures significantly affect the structure and performance of samples. The best property was obtained by sintering bioglass with 10 wt% of CNF at 750 °C.