Cold Sintering of Advanced Ceramics and Glass along with Natural Sustainable Materials for Bone Tissue Engineering

传统上，为了获得致密的产品，烧结需要进行高达80%的熔化温度(Tm)的热处理，以促进材料的传输以消除气孔。这样的高温在能源方面是昂贵的，在陶瓷设备的制造中受到限制，这些设备通常需要集成聚合物，这些聚合物受到挥发性、熔融、氧化、相互作用和热膨胀与陶瓷失配的影响。Reaney教授在陶瓷和器件的冷烧结方面进行了深入的研究，他已经申请了一项专利(P100343WO01)，其中包括在~100oC下加固生物玻璃和生物玻璃/聚合物复合材料。这将允许开发高填充含量的复合材料，并包含聚合物基质，如聚(3-羟基丁酸酯)，这是一种高度生物相容性和可持续的细菌起源的聚合物，在170℃熔化，而不会发生任何降解。这些复合材料将为骨组织工程提供较高承载能力的植入物。目前，还没有这种生物相容和可生物吸收的聚合物植入物可用于组织工程方法来承载应用，如肩部和髋关节置换/再生。

Traditionally, sintering to create dense products requires heat treatment up to 80% of the melting temperature (Tm) to promote the transport of material to eliminate pores. Such high temperatures are costly in terms of energy and restrictive in the manufacture of ceramics devices which often require integration of polymers that suffer from volatility, melting, oxidation, interaction, and mismatch in thermal expansion with the ceramic. Professor Reaney has carried out in depth research on cold sintering of ceramics and devices, a patent (P100343WO01) has been filed which includes the consolidation of Bioglass and Bioglass/polymer composites at ~100oC. This will allow the development of composites with high filler content and also inclusion of polymer matrices such as Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate), a highly biocompatible and sustainable polymer of bacterial origin which melt at 170oC, without any degradation. These composites will lead to the development of relatively higher load bearing implants for bone tissue engineering. Currently no such biocompatible and bioresorbable polymer-based implant is available for a tissue engineering approach to load bearing applications such as shoulder and hip replacement/regeneration.