Competent F18 bioglass-Biosilicate® bone graft scaffold substitutes

Biosilicate® glass-ceramic (BioS) offers an attractive choice for the manufacturing of scaffolds because of their high bioactivity, non-toxicity, bactericidal activity and biodegradability. Despite these positive properties, Biosilicate® scaffolds that have been developed so far show low fracture strength, limiting their clinical application. For this reason, our aim was to increase their strength through vacuum infiltration of F18 bioactive glass. First, we calculated the maximum attainable theoretical compressive strength of a scaffold using the Ryshkewitch and Ashby-Gibson models. We show that for a total porosity of 80 %, σ₀ = 250 MPa, and n = 5 the compressive strength estimated by both models is approximately 4.5 MPa. Afterward, the Biosilicate scaffolds were prepared using the foam replica technique and recoated several times with a F18 glass slurry to eliminate surface defects. Scanning Electron Microscopy examination showed that the F18 indeed helped to remove surface defects and partially infiltrated the hollow struts, significantly increasing their mechanical integrity. The F18-BioS scaffolds exhibited a total porosity of 82 %, an average cell size of 525 μm, and compressive strength of 3.3 ± 0.3 MPa, which is close to the predicted value and significantly higher than those of sole BioS scaffolds of a similar structure (< 0.1 MPa). These values are within the range of commercial scaffolds based on Hydroxyapatite (HA) and β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP), having a considerable advantage of being more osteoinductive, angiogenic, and highly bactericidal. The F18-BioS scaffolds developed in this work thus have high potential for odontology or craniofacial surgeries that do not involve high load–bearing conditions.