INFLUENCE OF COMPOSITION ON PROPERTIES AND MICROSTRUCTURE OF CERAMIC ZIRCONIA CALCIUM PHOSPHATE COMPOSITES

A. OZOLS; S. ROZENBERG; M. BARREIRO; J. FAIG; L. GARRIDO; M.P. ALBANO

Buenos Aires,Argentina

Congreso; Congreso SAM/CONAMET 2009; 2009

The feasibility of enhancing the mechanical strength of calcium phosphates, CP, by incorporation of zirconia, destined to bone repair, is analyzed. This aim leads to prepare two series of Hydroxyapatite, HA and ZrO2 composites. Zirconia powder is stabilized with 8 and 16 molar % of CaO producing premixes, named as ZC(a) and ZC(b), and which are blended to HA up to 50 % of total weight, forming the HA-xZC(y) (y = a, b) mixtures. These are dispersed in 20 wt% protein water solutions in order to produce slurries adequate to gelcasting processing. The obtained greens are heated at 1350 ºC as sintering temperature during 90 minutes. The resulting composites were moulded as plates and as acetabular cups of hip prosthesis, to be employed in bone grafting. The materials have multi-phase microcrystalline structure based on Zr-Ca and Ca phosphates compounds, due to HA thermal decomposition, depicted by mean XRD and energy dispersive spectrometry, EDS. The correlation between processing temperatures, composition, microstructure and strength are complemented by SEM analyses and three point bending tests.