Zro2 Gelcast Foams Coated With Apatite Layers

In this work, gel-casting of foams method was used to produce ZrO2 porous ceramics. The obtained foams with total porosity of 89.5 vol% were composed of approximately spherical cells having the mean diameter of 537 +/- 153 mu m interconnected by circular cell windows having the mean diameter of 152 +/- 82 mu m. Next, the ZrO2 foams were coated with fluorapatite (FA) and hydroxyapatite (HA) layers by slurry infiltration. The intermediate fluorapatite (FA) layer was introduced to prevent the chemical reactions between ZrO2 and HA at high temperatures during sintering process. The ZrO2 samples containing only HA coatings, were also tested, for comparison. The obtained ceramic biomaterials were subjected to in vitro tests in the simulated body fluid (SBF) solution. The results show that the ZrO2 foams with FA/HA layers possessed better bioactivity than the foams with the HA/HA coating.