Improvement of compressive strength of porous hydroxyapatite scaffolds by adding polystyrene to camphene-based slurries

The compressive strength of porous hydroxyapatite (HA) scaffolds was enhanced by adding polystyrene (PS) polymer as a binder to hydroxyapatite (HA)/camphene slurries. As the PS content was increased from 0 to 20 vol.% in relation to the HA content, the compressive strength was significantly increased from 1.1 ± 0.2 to 2.3 ± 0.5 MPa, while the pore size was decreased from 277 ± 47 to 170 ± 29 µm. The improvement in the compressive strength was mainly attributed to both the suppression of the cracking of the green sample during freeze drying and the mitigation of the formation of micro-pores in the HA walls.