Hydroxyapatite powder used for rapid prototyping in medical engineering

A key requirement in the field of bone tissue engineering is the development of scaffold structures on which cells adhere. This can be done by fabricating scaffolds by direct procedures like Three-Dimensional (3D) printing or by indirect procedures like casting. With the 3D-printing process, different structures were built up using HydroxyApatite (HA) powder and a special binder material. Afterwards the printed 3D structures were sintered. For the casting process, moulds have been made of different resins by stereolithography and other processes using polymers and waxes. These structures were filled by a suspension of HA. The casting process yielded a better resolution than 3D printing, but exhibited restrictions with respect to the degree of porosity.