Bioactive Glasses: Synthesis, Characterization, and Bioactivity

Traditional orthopedic treatments revolve around providing external metallic support or surgical interventions to treat defects like non-union fractures, with autograft being the gold standard for treating severe injuries. Replacements have been desired due to constraints in access to autografts and immunological complications related to allografts. Several types of synthetic materials for bone grafting and fillers have been developed in earlier decades. Bone tissue engineering is an emerging field that focuses on developing bone graft materials to support regeneration techniques to repair damaged bone tissue. There is a special class of biomaterials known as bioceramics, which are bioactive materials, including materials like calcium sulfates, silicates, and calcium phosphate materials like hydroxyapatite, and beta-tricalcium phosphate (ß-TCP). Bioceramics with suitable natural or synthetic polymers have been widely used to fabricate composite matrices for bone tissue reconstruction. Bioglass is one of the most bioactive ceramics and could be one of the most potential bioceramics to facilitate bone cell growth and differentiation. However, the higher bioactivity of bioglass also poses certain challenges, such as a rise in pH and an abrupt loss of mechanical strength of the matrix. Therefore, the controlled bioactivity of bioglass is one of the prerequisites for suitable bone graft or filler biomaterial development. The objective of this chapter is to review studies done to understand the dissolution behavior of a bioceramic known as bioglass, which refers to calcium sodium phosphosilicate (SiO2-Na2O-CaO-P2O5) glass materials, and the techniques that could be utilized to control its dissolution behavior.