Nanostructured bioactive glass coating on porous hydroxyapatite scaffold for strength enhancement

Many attempts have been focused on preparing highly porous scaffolds with appropriate mechanical strength. This paper has developed a new route to enhance the compressive strength of porous HA (hydroxyapatite) scaffold (porosity: ∼ 83%, mean pore size:∼ 800 μm). Briefly this route included nanostructure coating of bioactive glass on struts of porous HA. Coating microstructure consisted of the grains with the range between 91 and 320 nm and micron size pores that could be detected by SEM observation. This simple method improved the compressive strength of highly porous HA from 0.22 to 1.49 MPa. The obtained scaffolds provided good mechanical support while maintaining bioactivity so they could be used as tissue engineering scaffolds for low-load bearing applications.