Speaker
Description
One of the most important tissue engineering strategies is based on porous structures or scaffolds to provide a support for the growth and proliferation of cells in the damaged tissue. For bone regeneration, alumina is a suitable candidate thanks to its biocompatibility and its excellent and tunable mechanical properties. In this work, an original procedure is introduced, based on the combination of two techniques, namely, the spark plasma sintering (SPS), which allows fast sintering and maximizes the mechanical properties due to the control of microstructure, and the sacrificial template, which permits to generate a predesigned porous structures. Hence, we used different types of carbon particles as sacrificial agents which create different porous distributions and sizes with two-fold objective: mimic the porous distribution in human bone, and emulate its mechanical properties. Finally, in order to bioactivate the porous alumina scaffolds, we used the sol-gel method to create PDMS-SiO2 based coatings are employed.
Microstructural characteristics of the samples were studied by Hg porosimetry, nitrogen adsorption, CAT, and SEM and mechanical properties were assessed by uniaxial compression tests. EDX allowed to analyse the elements in the coating. Bioactivity was evaluated by immersion in SBF for identification of the precipitated apatite layer and analysis of ionic concentration in the fluid by ICP. The pore size distribution of the scaffolds as well as their Young’s modulus were compared to those of bone reference samples. First results showed satisfactory porous similarity between scaffolds and bone and suggested additional improvement in the mechanical properties.
In summary, these preliminary results showed an encouraging outcome and indicate that porous alumina scaffolds produced by this strategy are promising candidates for a new line of scaffolds for bone tissue regeneration.
| Speaker Country | Spain |
|---|