Investigations of Solution Combustion Process and their Utilization for Bioceramic Applications

Abstract

Solution combustion synthesis (SCS) with its origin at IPC department of IISc has been widely practiced for synthesis of oxide materials. It is simple and low cost process, with energy and time savings that can be used to produce homogeneous, high purity, uniformly doped, nano crystalline ceramic powders. The powders characteristics such as crystallite size and surface area are primarily governed by enthalpy, flame temperature of combustion, fuel and fuel to oxidizer ratio ( F/O). In the present work an attempt has been made to investigate the process in order to exercise a control over the phase formation and nature of the product. Initial part of the work deals with the effect of fuel to oxidizer ratio on the powder properties of binary oxides with urea as fuel. The variation of adiabatic flame temperatures are calculated theoretically for different F/O ratios according to thermodynamic concept and correlated with the observed flame temperatures. Difference in the measured flame temperature and theoretical flame temperature in the fuel rich region is explained on the basis of incomplete combustion model. The effect of decomposition temperature difference of fuel and oxidizer, solubility of reactants on exothermicity of combustion reaction taking aluminiumnitrate system for various fuels is investigated. The effect of mixed fuel approach is studied by using the urea-glycine mixed fuel system using aluminium nitrate as oxidizer and employed for successful synthesis of the gamma alumina. Further Compaction behavior of SCS nano ceramic powders is studied by using Universal testing machine and the effect of F/O ratio, on agglomeration strength, aggregation strength of powder is investigated. Very few reports can be found on usage of SCS ceramic powder for biomaterial applications. By using these investigations a pyroxene series Diopside (CaMgSi2O6) silicate material is synthesized by SCS. Effect of different fuels on Diopside (DP) phase formation is investigated. Finally the DP and DP-ZnO composites, made by using Uniaxial hot pressing are investigated for their antibacterial, cytocompatibility properties. Antibacterial activity of E.Coli bacterium of Diopside powders was dose dependent type. Results of the bioactivity investigations shown flattened MC3T3 mouse osteoblast cells and MC C2C12 Myoblast cells and linkage bridges formed between them on Diopside and DP-ZnO surfaces show cyto compatibility and MTT results showed that percentage of ZnO needs to be tailored between 0-10 in order to achieve maximum cytocompatibility coupled with antibacterial property.