Bioactive Glass Nanoparticles: From Synthesis to Materials Design for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Thanks to their high biocompatibility and bioactivity, bioactive glasses are very promising materials for soft and hard tissue repair and engineering. Because bioactivity and specific surface area intrinsically linked, the last decade has seen a focus on the development of highly porous and/or nano-sized materials. This review emphasizes the synthesis of bioactive glass nanoparticles and materials design strategies. The first part comprehensively covers mainly soft chemistry processes, which aim to obtain dispersible and monodispersed nanoparticles. The second part discusses the use of bioactive glass nanoparticles for medical applications, highlighting the design of materials. Mesoporous nanoparticles for drug delivery, injectable systems and scaffolds consisting of bioactive glass nanoparticles dispersed in a polymer, implant coatings and particle dispersions will be presented.

Keywords: bioactive glass; biomedical applications; nanoparticles; sol-gel.

Figure 1

Schematic representation of the different strategies to synthesize binary bioactive glass nanoparticles (SiO₂-CaO).

Figure 2

Selection of TEM or SEM images of bioactive glass nanoparticles synthesized by different groups. Adapted with permission from [14] (a); [16] (c); [17] (g), ©Wiley; [18] (e); [20] (h); [21] (i); [23] (k), ©Elsevier; [15] (b,d), ©Royal Society of Chemistry; [19] (f) and [22] (j), ©Springer.

Figure 3

SEM micrographs of bioactive glass particles-polymer composites made by thermally-induced phase separation (TIPS), with poly(l-lactide), [20] (a) and [63] (b); poly(lactide-co-glycolide), [61] (c); chitosan-gelatin, [58] (d); gelatin, [59] (e) and collagen-phosphatidyserine, [62] (f) as polymer matrix. Figure adapted with permission from [20,58,61,62,63] ©Elsevier, [59] ©American chemical Society.