Affiliations: Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Centre, Department of Materials, Imperial College London, UK | Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, UK
Note: [] Corresponding author: Priya Saravanapavan, Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Centre, Department of Materials, Imperial College London, Bessemer Building, South Kensington Campus, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom. Tel.: +44 (0) 207 589 5111, extension 56753; Fax: +44 (0) 207 594 6809; E‐mail: p.pavan@imperial.ac.uk.
Abstract: Bioactive materials are routinely used in dental and orthopaedic applications. The concept was first introduced in 1971, with the discovery of 45S5 Bioglass®, which is known to develop an interfacial bond between the implant and the host tissue. This glass is composed of SiO2, CaO, P2O5 and Na2O. Since then numerous glasses and glass ceramics with similar compositions have been extensively studied for clinical applications. Until 1990 it was accepted that P2O5 and Na2O were necessary components for the glass composition to be bioactive. However, calcium silicate glasses with high SiO2 content are impossible to produce using the traditional melt‐quench method. This is due to the liquid–liquid immiscibility region that is present between 0.02 and 0.3 mole fraction of CaO and in terms of bioactivity, high CaO compositions were inferior to those quaternary bioactive glass compositions already in existence. In the last few years several studies have been reported regarding the production of CaO–SiO2 glasses via the sol–gel processing technique. This report summarises the findings of the past and the present and also outlines potential of these calcium silicate gel‐glasses in the field of biomaterials.
