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| Abstract No.: |
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| Title: |
Plasma spray of free-standing components for bone tissue engineering
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| Authors: |
Diana García-Alonso* / MPRC. School of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering. Dublin City University., Ireland
Joseph Stokes / MPRC. School of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering. Dublin City University., Ireland
Lisa Looney/ MPRC. School of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering. Dublin City University., Ireland
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| Abstract: |
Plasma Thermal Spraying of Hydroxyapatite (HA) has been used over the past few decades for biomedical applications. This process applies the HA (synthetic bone) onto femoral stem implants, which is then inserted into a humans femur during hip replacement therapy. The coating allows bone in-growth and regeneration to occur in order to fix the implant to the human bone. HA itself is oseoconductive and bioactive, but also brittle. To broaden the use of HA, this research proposes to build-up near-net-shape free-standing components which would form a bio-composite with strength/structure similar to that of bone, namely a biological scaffold. Scaffolds are required to repair damaged bone hence this provides a novel solution using plasma thermal spraying in Bioengineering. The innovative challenge in this research is to obtain strong stable free-standing-components using a technique that has never been used for this application. The powder material used would consist of pure HA and HA with different additions of YSZ (and later possibly include polymers to enhance the structure). An experimental and analytical study on the influential parameters of the plasma spray technique on the stability and thickness of the free-standing component was conducted to arrive at the proposed scaffold and early indications suggest that scaffold structures can be formed. Further research will involve analysing the scaffold for cell growth and other biological functionality.
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