Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Oral and Dental Medicine - Department of Dental Materials

Composite natural polymers/bioceramics scaffolds are considered promising in hard tissue engineering, as they combine the advantages of different materials and benefits from the flexibility and easy shaping of polymers with the higher strength, stiffness and bioactivity of the bioactive ceramics, achieving the best mechanical and biological performance.Thus, the current study aimed at preparing and characterizing undoped and Ag-doped BG nanoparticles, fabricated using two different methods; sol-gel-derived BG nanoparticles (BGsg and Ag-BGsg) and monodispersed BG nanoparticles (BGm and Ag-BGm) fabricated using modified Stöber method. This was followed by the fabrication of a three-dimensional (3D) nanocomposite porous zein scaffolds incorporating the prepared undoped and Ag-doped BG nanoparticles to investigate their chemical, biological, mechanical and physical properties in comparison to the pure zein scaffolds.Salt-leaching process using sodium chloride (NaCl) as porogen was used to fabricate porous zein and nanocomposite zein:BG scaffolds containing the four different BG powders,BGsg, Ag-BGsg, BGm and Ag-BGm.SEM was used to observe the morphology and microstructure of the five scaffolds groups, pure zein, zein:BGsg, zein:Ag-BGsg, zein:BGm and zein:Ag-BGm. SEM micrographs showed that all the five scaffolds groups are porous with a wide range of pore diameter.FTIR spectrum of pure zein scaffold showed the three characteristic amide peaks for zein protein, which corresponds to amide I, amide II and amide III. Zein:BG scaffolds showed additional peaks characteristic of SiO2 based glasses

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