Biodegradable PHBV Polymer-Based Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering - Biodegradable Polymer-Based Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering - page 49

Fig. 3.6 a SEM micrograph of nano-sized HA partices; b HA/PHBV composite scaffold
containing 10 % nHA (Sultana and Khan 2012 )

Table 3.2 Density and porosity of PHBV and HA/PHBV scaffolds (Sultana and Wang 2008a )
Scaffold a Pore type Quenching temperature

(°C)

Measured density
(g/cm 3 )

PHBV Open − 35 0.1961

5 % HA/PHBV Open − 35 0.2110

10 % HA/PHBV Open + closed − 35 0.2601

20 % HA/PHBV Open + closed − 35 0.3102

a The polymer solution concentration was 10 % w/v for all scaffolds

Table 3.3 Degree of crystallinity of PHBV and HA/PHBV scaffolds
Scaffold a Crystallinity (%)

PHBV 56.88
5 % HA/PHBV 52.87
10 % HA/PHBV 52.17
20 % HA/PHBV 46.28
a The polymer solution concentration was 10 % w/v for all scaffolds

a freeze-drying vessel sublimate the solvent and water phase crystals. A series
of composite scaffolds containing 5-20 % by weight of HA nanoparticles were
fabricated using PHBV emulsions having the polymer solution concentration
of 5, 7.5 and 10 % (w/v), respectively. With an increase in the amount of HA
nanoparticles in the composite scaffolds, the density of scaffolds increased while
the porosity decreased to some extent (Table 3.2 ) (Sultana and Wang 2008a ). All
composite scaffolds exhibited high porosity levels of at least 79 %. The crys-
tallinily (X c ) decreased with the increase in the amount of HA nanoparticles
(Table 3.3 ).