Analysis Of Local Structure In Zinc Containing Phosphate Glasses For New Bone Cements By Reverse Monte Carlo Modelling Of Total Neutron Scattering Data

Abstract

Biomaterials have been in demand throughout history to repair and restore damaged tissue and organs. Phosphate based composites for use as bone cements have dominated the bone cement industry due to their structural resemblance to natural bone. Glass-ionomer cements, (GICs) are also used as bone cements primarily in the dental field for restorative applications. Since aluminium is associated with neurotoxicity, this study is directed towards the zinc containing phosphate glass, 50ZnO:50P2O5, where the use of zinc instead of aluminium has shown to improve the GICs biocompatibility as well as the its adhesion to bone.

Various techniques including Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Molecular Dynamics as well as neutron and X-ray scattering have been employed in the determination of the structure of this glass. This research primarily focuses on the analysis of total neutron scattering data first corrected using GudrunN then analysed using the Empirical Potential Structure Refinement (EPSR) based program, Dissolve, then Gorfit and also Reverse Monte Carlo (RMC) methods to determine the structure of the zinc phosphate glass. The corresponding obtained angular distributions, coordination numbers and bond distances of relevant correlations closely matched those of previous studies carried out by Hoppe et al. who used very similar techniques. The structure was determined to be quasirandom where ZnO was found to exist mainly in tetrahedral form with a small octahedral minority.