Bioactive ceramics and glasses

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on bioactive ceramics and glasses and explains the properties, current uses, and their use as potential bone scaffold materials assessed from the materials chemistry perspective. The discovery of Bioglass ® , the first material that formed a strong bond to bone, not only launched the field of bioactive glasses but bioactive ceramics in general. Aside from glasses and ceramics, a third class of material has been developed, which is in widespread use in Japan: glass-ceramics, particularly the apatite-wollastonite glass-ceramics that originated from Bioglass ® . The chapter introduces each of these materials, their clinical products and indicates their future potential in tissue engineering applications. All bioactive ceramics are used in dental applications, maxillofacial restoration, and bone defect fillers in powder and molded forms. Hydroxyapatite (HA) and A-W glass-ceramics have been used in vertebral disc replacements and other bone defect replacements. Although these materials have been used to repair bone and show regenerative potential, none of them has been used in clinical tissue engineering applications. There are two main reasons for this; first, there are not suitable regulatory procedures for such constructs and secondly, their mechanical properties are not ideal for all defect sites, especially those under tensile load. That said, their bioactive properties are unparalleled by other materials; therefore, there is potential for the tissue engineering strategy to work around these disadvantages. The chapter reviews the properties, history and applications of bioactive glasses and ceramics and discusses their potential use in bone tissue engineering.