Synthesis of bioceramic scaffolds for bone tissue engineering by rapid prototyping technique

This study presents a novel rapid prototyping process to fabricate silicate/hydroxyapatite (HA) bone scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. The HA particles are embedded in the gelled silica matrix to form a green part of bioceramic bone scaffold after processing by selective laser sintering. The composition of the bioceramic scaffold is in the series of SiO2 center dot P2O5 center dot CaO. Results indicate that the proposed process could fabricate a multilayer hollow shell structure with brittle property but sufficient integrity for handling prior to post-processing. The fabricated bone scaffold models had a surface finish of 25 mu m, a dimensional shrinkage of 16 %, a maximum bending strength of 4.7 MPa, and an apparent porosity of 28 % under the laser energy density of 1.5 J/mm(2). In vitro bioactivity evaluation by optical density value using a microculture tetrazolium test assay revealed that the bioceramic bone scaffolds were suitable for cell culture, demonstrating their application in tissue engineering.