Kinetic neutron diffraction and SANS
studies of phase formation in bioactive
machinable glass ceramics

Bentley, PM; Kilcoyne, SH; Bubb, NL; Ritter, C; Dewhurst, CD; Wood, DJ

Abstract

Bioactive fluormica–fluorapatite glass-ceramic materials offer a very encouraging solution to
the problem of efficient restoration and reconstruction of hard tissues. To produce material
with the desired crystalline phases, a five-stage heat treatment must be performed. This
thermal processing has a large impact on the microstructure and ultimately the final
mechanical properties of the materials. We have examined the thermal processing of one of
our most promising machinable biomaterials, using time-resolved small angle neutron
scattering and neutron diffraction to study the nucleation and growth of crystallites. The
processing route had already been optimized by studying the properties of quenched samples
using x-ray diffraction, mechanical measurements and differential thermal analysis. However
these results show that the heat treatment can be further optimized in terms of crystal
nucleation, and we show that these techniques are the only methods by which a truly
optimized thermal processing route may be obtained.

Citation

machinable glass ceramics. Biomedical Materials, 2, 151-157. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-6041/2/2/014

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2007
• Deposit Date: Oct 1, 2010
• Journal: Biomedical Materials
• Print ISSN: 1748-6041
• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2
• Pages: 151-157
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-6041/2/2/014
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-6041/2/2/014