Porous bioceramic scaffolds prepared from supercritically dried sol-gel derived calcium phosphates
RADOVANOVIC-PERIC F. 1, MANDIC V. 1, BAFTI A. 1
1 Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Zagreb, Croatia
Nowadays, calcium phosphate (CaP) ceramics are the golden standard for bone engineering materials because of their many useful properties in bone grafting. Their bioactivity can be assigned to their structural similarity to the mineral apatite part of bone and when implanted they enhance the growth of bone cells and direct deposition of bone for rapid bone regeneration, that is they are osteoconductive. Research also strongly suggests that the key parameters that play a role in the material’s osteoinductivity, that is the property of a material to grow bone, are microstructural surface properties such as particle size, microporosity, specific surface area and surface roughness. In this study, we focused on the preparation of porous CaP bioactive scaffolds by drying CaP gels with supercritical CO2. The gels were prepared via aqueous precipitation of apatite from calcium nitrate (Ca(NO3)2) and diammonium hydrogen phosphate ((NH4)2HPO4). We varied the Ca:P ratio, drying time and pressure to obtain different porosities and microstructures. The samples were characterized by X-Ray Diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscopy, FT-IR spectroscopy and adsorption-desorption isotherms (BET analysis).