Bone-like structure by modified freeze casting

Abstract

Freeze casting has emerged as one of the most promising manufacturing methods to fabricate porous scaffolds in recent years. This is due to various reasons which include a wide range of materials which can be used in this process, easiness of the process, etc. One of the major objectives of this work was to fabricate bone-like structure by using a modified freeze casting process. In this work, Hydroxyapatite and Tricalcium phosphate scaffolds with bone-like structure were fabricated by understanding and utilizing the basic physics of freeze casting. Thermal conductivity of the base plate is a crucial factor for obtaining controlled pore and porosity distribution in a porous scaffold. It was found that designing the base plate with variable thermal conductivity has led to the formation of bone-like structure. Porous scaffolds were quantitatively analyzed for pore size and porosity distribution at center and circumference. Porosity at circumference was observed to be approximately dropped by 55%, a similar trend was seen for pore size. Therefore, it was significant evidence that modified freeze casting has capable in fabricating bone-like structures with ease and good control. This will open many new applications of porous scaffolds in biomedical, energy devices, chemical catalyst and many more.