Microstructures and mechanical properties of biphasic calcium phosphate bioceramics fabricated by SLA 3D printing

Porous biphasic calcium phosphate (BCP) bioceramics are considered to be the most promising bone repair materials in clinical medicine. Stereolithography (SLA) 3D printing can precisely fabricate bioceramic scaffolds with complex porous structure. During this process, how to obtain a suitable sintering procedure for BCP bioceramics by SLA 3D printing is the key to determine the microstructures and mechanical properties, but this is absent. In this present study, we prepared BCP bioceramics with superior densification and mechanical properties by SLA 3D printing, and mainly investigated the effects of sintering temperature and condition on the microstructures and mechanical properties of SLA 3D printed BCP bioceramics for the first time. At the optimized procedure of sintering temperature 1250 °C for 2 h, the 3D printed BCP bioceramics showed uniform shrinkage in all directions, and especially the mechanical properties were close to that of human cortical bone. Furthermore, complex porous BCP scaffolds with high porosity (51.49 %) and compressive strength (8.14 MPa) were successfully obtained. BCP bioceramics greatly promoted the proliferation of MC3T3-E1 cells by the release of Ca and P ion and presented excellent bioactivity. This work proves that SLA 3D printing technology can prepare BCP bioceramics with high mechanical and functional properties, and provides a new route for manufacturing high performance BCP bioceramic scaffolds with complex structure by SLA 3D printing for repairing bone defect in clinical.