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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

Authors

PM Bentley

SH Kilcoyne

NL Bubb

C Ritter

CD Dewhurst

DJ Wood



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