Cold Sintering of Advanced Ceramics and Glass along with Natural Sustainable Materials for Bone Tissue Engineering

Traditionally, sintering to create dense products requires heat treatment up to 80% of the melting temperature (Tm) to promote the transport of material to eliminate pores. Such high temperatures are costly in terms of energy and restrictive in the manufacture of ceramics devices which often require integration of polymers that suffer from volatility, melting, oxidation, interaction, and mismatch in thermal expansion with the ceramic. Professor Reaney has carried out in depth research on cold sintering of ceramics and devices, a patent (P100343WO01) has been filed which includes the consolidation of Bioglass and Bioglass/polymer composites at ~100oC. This will allow the development of composites with high filler content and also inclusion of polymer matrices such as Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate), a highly biocompatible and sustainable polymer of bacterial origin which melt at 170oC, without any degradation. These composites will lead to the development of relatively higher load bearing implants for bone tissue engineering. Currently no such biocompatible and bioresorbable polymer-based implant is available for a tissue engineering approach to load bearing applications such as shoulder and hip replacement/regeneration.