Bone formation on the apatite-coated zirconia porous scaffolds within a rabbit calvarial defect

Abstract

Previously, a strong and bioactive ceramic scaffold consisting of a porous zirconia body coated with apatite double layers (fluorapatite (FA) as an inner layer and hydroxyapatite (HA) as an outer layer) was successfully fabricated. In this contribution, the authors investigate the in vivo performance of the engineered bioceramic scaffolds using a rabbit calvarial defect model. In particular, the porosity and pore size of the scaffolds are varied in order to observe the geometrical effects of the scaffolds on their bone formation behaviors. The scaffolds supported on a zirconia framework can be produced with an extremely high porosity ( 84–87%), while retaining excellent compressive strength ( 7–8 MPa), which has been unachievable in the case of pure apatite scaffolds ( 74% porosity with 2MPa strength).