Bioeutectic: a new ceramic material for human bone replacement

In the present work, a new way of obtaining bioactive ceramic materials with eutectic morphology is presented. To this purpose the binary system wollastonite-tricalcium phosphate was selected, taking into account the different bioactivity behaviour of both phases. The material is formed by quasi-spherical colonies composed of alternating radial lamellae of wollastonite and tricalcium phosphate. In in vitro experiments the material presents a high reactivity, with the formation of two well-differentiated zones of hydroxyapatite, one formed by alteration of the eutectic material with solution of the wollastonite into the simulated body fluid and subsequent pseudomorphic transformation of the tricalcium phosphate into hydroxyapatite, and the other, in the last stages of the experiments, by deposition of hydroxyapatite onto the surface of the material. The hydroxyapatite morphology, formed at the beginning of the reaction, is similar to that of porous bone. The method used opens the opportunity to develop a new family of bioactive materials with different constituents, binary or ternary, for which the authors propose the general name of bioeutectics(R). (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Limited. All rights reserved.