Cellular Response to Doping of High Porosity Foamed Alumina with Ca, P, Mg, and Si

Edwin Soh; Elizabeth Kolos; Andrew J Ruys

doi:10.3390/ma8031074

Cellular Response to Doping of High Porosity Foamed Alumina with Ca, P, Mg, and Si

Materials (Basel). 2015 Mar 13;8(3):1074-1088. doi: 10.3390/ma8031074.

Authors

Edwin Soh¹, Elizabeth Kolos², Andrew J Ruys³

Affiliations

¹ Biomedical Engineering, School of AMME J07, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. edwin-soh@artc.a-star.edu.sg.
² Biomedical Engineering, School of AMME J07, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. elizabeth.kolos@hotmail.com.
³ Biomedical Engineering, School of AMME J07, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. andrew.ruys@sydney.edu.au.

Abstract

Foamed alumina was previously synthesised by direct foaming of sulphate salt blends varying ammonium mole fraction (AMF), foaming heating rate and sintering temperature. The optimal product was produced with 0.33AMF, foaming at 100 °C/h and sintering at 1600 °C. This product attained high porosity of 94.39%, large average pore size of 300 µm and the highest compressive strength of 384 kPa. To improve bioactivity, doping of porous alumina by soaking in dilute or saturated solutions of Ca, P, Mg, CaP or CaP + Mg was done. Saturated solutions of Ca, P, Mg, CaP and CaP + Mg were made with excess salt in distilled water and decanted. Dilute solutions were made by diluting the 100% solution to 10% concentration. Doping with Si was done using the sol gel method at 100% concentration only. Cell culture was carried out with MG63 osteosarcoma cells. Cellular response to the Si and P doped samples was positive with high cell populations and cell layer formation. The impact of doping with phosphate produced a result not previously reported. The cellular response showed that both Si and P doping improved the biocompatibility of the foamed alumina.

Keywords: cellular response; doping; foaming; porous alumina.