Sol-Gel Derived Tertiary Bioactive Glass-Ceramic Nanorods Prepared via Hydrothermal Process and Their Composites with Poly(Vinylpyrrolidone-Co-Vinylsilane)

Dibakar Mondal; Andrei Zaharia; Kibret Mequanint; Amin S Rizkalla

doi:10.3390/jfb11020035

Sol-Gel Derived Tertiary Bioactive Glass-Ceramic Nanorods Prepared via Hydrothermal Process and Their Composites with Poly(Vinylpyrrolidone-Co-Vinylsilane)

J Funct Biomater. 2020 Jun 1;11(2):35. doi: 10.3390/jfb11020035.

Authors

Dibakar Mondal^{1

2}, Andrei Zaharia³, Kibret Mequanint^{1

4}, Amin S Rizkalla^{1

2

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5B9, Canada.
² Bone and Joint Institute, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5B9, Canada.
³ Schulich Dentistry, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5B9, Canada.
⁴ School of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5B9, Canada.

Abstract

Bioactive glass (BG) nanoparticles have wide applications in bone repair due to their bone-bonding and biodegradable nature. In this work, nanometric rod-shaped ternary SiO₂-CaO-P₂O₅ bioactive glass particles were prepared through sol-gel chemistry followed by a base-induced hydrothermal process at 130 °C and 170 °C for various times up to 36 h. This facile, low-temperature and surfactant-free hydrothermal process has shown to be capable of producing uniform nanorods and nanowires. One-dimensional growth of nanorods and the characteristics of siloxane bridging networks were dependent on the hydrothermal temperature and time. Hardened bioactive composites were prepared from BG nanorods and cryo-milled poly(vinylpyrrolidone-co-triethoxyvinylsilane) in the presence of ammonium phosphate as potential bone graft biomaterials. Covalent crosslinking has been observed between the organic and inorganic components within these composites. The ultimate compressive strength and modulus values increased with increasing co-polymer content, reaching 27 MPa and 500 MPa respectively with 30% co-polymer incorporation. The materials degraded in a controlled non-linear manner when incubated in phosphate-buffered saline from 6 h to 14 days. Fibroblast cell attachment and spreading on the composite were not as good as the positive control surfaces and suggested that they may require protein coating in order to promote favorable cell interactions.

Keywords: bioactive glass-ceramics; co-polymer; composites; hydrothermal processing; mechanical properties.