Thermally Processed Silk Composite Orthopedic Devices
Bose, Shounak.
2020
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Thesis (M.S.)--Tufts
University, 2020.
Submitted to the Dept. of Biomedical Engineering.
Advisor: David Kaplan.
Committee: Peggy Cebe, and Chunmei Li.
Keywords: Biomedical engineering, and Materials Science.
Over 500,000 bone defect repair surgeries are performed in the United States each year - a number expected to increase due to a growing and ... read moreaging population. Limitations in bone autografts, the current standard of bone repair, have resulted in the need and further development of bone tissue engineering: the development of high-quality scaffolds that can mimic the structure and function of bone. Previous work has shown potential for the use of lyophilized silk fibroin powder thermally processed into a solid bulk material in bone-repair devices such as screws. However, there are opportunities for improvement regarding the material's mechanical strength, osteointegration, and swelling in an aqueous environment. One method to try and address these issues is dry mixing of silk powder with additional materials before thermal processing to create a bulk composite material. In this work, we mixed silk powder with single-walled carbon nanotubes at various ratios to evaluate the mechanical properties of the thermally processed material. We also combined silk powder with hydroxyapatite (HAP) to potentially improve the material's osteointegration, mechanical properties while hydrated, and water absorption. Materials with weight ratios of 30% and 40% HAP with silk absorbed 50% less water compared to pure silk scaffolds. Additionally, these combinations of HAP-silk had a 200% higher flexural modulus than that of pure silk, making them ideal for future in-vivo evaluation after machining. We also studied the effect of calcium - a major component of hydroxyapatite - on the structure and properties of silk fibroin.read less - ID:
- m039kk21c
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