Fabrication and Characterization of Porous beta-Tricalcium Phosphate Scaffold for Bone Regeneration

Resorb-able bioceramic scaffolds are often used for bone regeneration purposes. The most important rule of this scaffolds is to act as a bioactive template for cell attachment, proliferation, and differentiation and then bone ingrowth and regeneration. So this scaffolds should have an interconnected porous structure. Calcium phosphate ceramics are the most important groups of bioceramics which includes the mentioned properties. b-tricalcium phosphate (b-TCP) is one of the mostly used bioceramic for bone defect filling during surgery. In this research b-tricalcium phosphate scaffold is fabricated using powder metallurgy-space holder method successfully. And its microstructural and mechanical properties are investigated using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and cold compression test. Results of SEM study indicate that fabricate b-TCP includes some micro pores with size of about 2 micrometer in the struts of scaffold. Results indicate that in the case of fabricated scaffold with macro pore size of about 340 micrometer, by increasing sintering temperature from 1000 to 1100 ◦C, the compression strength of scaffold increased by 15% without any phase transformation.

Keywords:

Porous Scaffold , mechanical properties , b-TCP