Preparation of mica/apatite glass-ceramics biomaterials

Glass-ceramics have become more and more important biomaterials. In this work mica glass/apatite composites with various compositions were prepared by casting and subsequent heat treatments. The effects of composition, phase constitution and crystallinity on mechanical properties, including elastic modulus and transverse rupture strength (TRS), were investigated by using X-ray diffraction analyses (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and mechanical tests. Results show that addition of apatite composition in mica glass accelerates the crystallization process and induces the formation of fluoroapatite phase, and the nucleation of apatite crystals occurs before that of mica crystals. The fuoroapatite in this work is needle-like, which is almost the same to that in human bone. The transverse rupture strength increases with the content of fluoroapatite and the crystallinity increasing, except that at a low apatite content the mechanical properties are lower than those of mica glass under the same processing conditions. The transverse rupture strength and elastic modulus obtained in this work fall in the range of those of human bone. SBF immersion test demonstrates good bioactivity of this biomaterial.