Bioceramic Scaffolds Fabrication by Rapid Prototyping Technology

This paper describes a rapid prototyping (RP) technology for forming a hydroxyapatite (HA) bone scaffold model. The HA powder and a silica sol are mixed into bioceramic slurry form under a suitable viscosity. The HA particles are embedded in the solidified silica matrix to form green parts via a wide range of process parameters after processing by selective laser sintering (SLS). The results indicate that the proposed process was possible to fabricate multilayers and hollow shell structure with brittle property but sufficient integrity for handling prior to post-processing. The fabricated bone scaffold models had a surface finish of 25 m, a dimensional shrinkage of 18 %, a maximum bending strength of 4.7 MPa under the laser energy density of 1.5 J/mm. Therefore, this process has a greater potential for fabrication bone scaffold in tissue engineering. Keywords—bioceramic, bone scaffold, rapid prototyping, selective laser sintering