Bioglass

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BioGlass is a commercially available type of bioactive glass It is also known as 45S5 glass. It is composed of SiO2, Na2O, CaO and P2O5. Professor Larry Hench developed BioGlass in the late 1960s. He was challenged by a MASH army officer to develop a material to help regenerate bone, as many Vietnam war veterans suffered badly from bone damage, such that most of them injured in this way lost their limbs.

The key composition features of BioGlass is that it contains less than 60mol% SiO2, high Na2O and CaO contents, high CaO/P2O5 ratio, which makes BioGlass highly reactive to aqueous medium and bioactive.

High bioactivity is the main advantage of BioGlass, while its disadvantage includes mechanical weakness, low fracture toughness due to amorphous 2-dimensional glass network. The bending strength of most BioGlass is in the range of 40-60MPa, which is not enough for load-bearing application. While its Young's modulus is 30-35GPa, very close to that of cortical bone.