Porosity engineering in bioactive glasses: a sol-gel approach

摘要

Among the various biomaterials used as bone substitutes or as prosthesis coatings in orthopedic surgery, bioactive glasses have attracted considerable interest1'2. When in contact with living tissues, dissolution and precipitation take place at the material / biological medium interface, and this leads to the formation of a phosphocalcic layer. This apatite-like layer is used as a mineralization site for bone cells and finally allows an intimate chemical bond between the glass and the bone. A fine control of bioactivity can be achieved by using soft chemistry routes to tailor the morphology and the texture of such porous bioactive glasses. Pore size can span several orders of magnitude from the nanometer to the millimeter. Each level of porosity (meso, macro,...) could then have biological usefulness, like for drug delivery, vascularization of the implant, or cell adhesion for tissue engineering. With this respect, mesoporous, macroporous and glass foams have been prepared.