Porous nanostructured biocomposites

II-12: Porous nanocomposites with interpenetrating phases

Miao Xigeng School of Materials Science & Engineering Nanyang Technology University

Abstract

Nanocomposites are numerous especially for the ceramic-polymer nanocomposites. A limited number of porous nanocomposites can also be found in the literature. However, the reported dense or porous nanocomposites basically show no continuously distributed phases; often one phase is isolated by another phase, which may be disadvantageous. For example, when bioactive ceramic particles are dispersed in a biodegradable polymer, the bioactive particles tend to become loose debris when the polymer degrades and disappears. If the bioactive phase is also continuously distributed in the three dimensional (3D) space, the bioactive ceramic phase showing slow or no degradation tends to form a 3D porous structure even when the biodegradable polymer phase disappears. Thus, interpenetrating bioactive ceramic and biodegradable polymer composites would have desirable shape and dimensional stability, which is in contrast with a sole dense or porous biodegradable polymer. On the other hand, it should be noticed that natural bone is porous, a composite of hydroxyapatite and collagen, a nanocomposite, and with interconnecting or interpenetrating phases. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to mimic the bone/ cartilage structure and develop novel porous nanocomposites for bone/ cartilage reconstruction and regeneration.