Bioactive glass reinforced polyurethane scaffolds- effect of PU – BG ratio
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Date
2016-06
Authors
Lim Weng Lip
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Abstract
In this study, porous bioactive glass (BG) reinforced polyurethane (PU) composite scaffolds with different PU: BG mass ratio were fabricated. Porous structure scaffolds were prepared using solvent casting combined with salt leaching (SCPL) method. The chemical and physical properties of the fabricated porous scaffolds were examined by several characterization techniques including Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA). SEM analysis was performed to analyse the microstructure at the cross-sectional area of porous scaffolds prepared where the distribution of scaffolds pores structure and BG particles distribution on the PU matrix were observed. Besides, the porous scaffolds prepared exhibit the overall open pore size which in the range of 130μm to 400μm with 77% to 81% porosity. The influence of BG particles addition on the properties of PUBG scaffolds such as thermal stability and compressive storage modulus were evaluated. In the results found that, the composite scaffolds with more BG particles shows higher storage modulus than the scaffolds with lower amount of BG particles. In the overall thermal stability results obtained, the thermal stability of polyurethane composite scaffolds was lower than the pure polyurethane scaffolds.