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

传统上，烧结以产生致密产品需要高达熔融温度（Tm）的80%的热处理，以促进材料的传输以消除孔隙。这样的高温在能量方面是昂贵的，并且在陶瓷装置的制造中是限制性的，所述陶瓷装置通常需要整合聚合物，所述聚合物遭受挥发性、熔化、氧化、相互作用以及与陶瓷的热膨胀失配。Reaney教授对陶瓷和器械的冷烧结进行了深入的研究，已申请专利（P100343 WO 01），其中包括在~ 100 oC下固化生物玻璃和生物玻璃/聚合物复合材料。这将允许开发具有高填料含量的复合材料，并且还包括聚合物基质，例如聚（3-羟基丁酸酯），这是一种高度生物相容性和可持续的细菌来源的聚合物，其在170 ℃下熔化，而不会发生任何降解。这些复合材料将导致开发相对更高的承重骨组织工程植入物。目前，没有这样的生物相容性和生物可吸收的基于聚合物的植入物可用于组织工程方法来承载应用，例如肩关节和髋关节置换/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.