Fabrication and Characterization of a Bioscaffold Using Hydroxyapatite and Unsaturated Polyester Resin

Abstract

Outstanding biodegradability and biocompatibility are attributes associated with particular polyester substances that make this group useful in specific biomedical fields. To assess the potential as a biomaterial, a novel composite consisting of hydroxyapatite (HAp) and unsaturated polyester resin (UPR) was developed in this work. Using a hand-lay-up technique, various percentages (50, 40, 30, 20, and 10%) of HAp were reinforced into the UPR matrix to fabricate composite materials out of glass sheets. Prior to processing of the composite samples, hydroxyapatite was chemically synthesized in a wet chemical manner. Using a universal testing machine (UTM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), the fabricated samples were characterized. The crystallographic parameters of synthesized hydroxyapatite (HAp) were also estimated through a range of formulas. The optimal amount for hydroxyapatite was 40% according to the findings of the tensile strength (TS), tensile modulus (TM), percentage of elongation at break (EB), bending strength (BS), and bending modulus (BM). Improvements in TS, TM, BS, and BM for the ideal combination were 39.39, 9.21, 912.05, and 259.96%, in each case, over the controlled one. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) has been implemented to determine the degradation temperature of the fabricated composites up to 600 °C.