Fabrication and characterization of tissue engineering scaffold based of nanohydroxyapatite - local rice starches

Abstract

Bone tissue scaffold had been ventured for over the decades as a solution for bone failure and trauma. Starch is the most common natural polymer that has been used as a biomaterials and a good candidate for scaffold fabrication as there are many resources of starch in Malaysia. Native starches may contribute differently in their structure in terms of the amylose content, interactions between granules, swelling ability and solubility in which those differences can be mainly due to the botanical origin. In Malaysia itself, there are various resources of rice starches. No research yet has been performed on the application of Malaysian rice starch as a bone tissue scaffold. Balik Wangi, Bubuk Wangi, and Bario rice starches were used to fabricate the scaffold via solvent casting and salt leaching technique. These three types of rice starch originally from Sarawak, Malaysia. From the study, the porosity and the density were examined via liquid displacement test and it was found the higher the starch percentage results higher porosity percentage. Here, the dielectric properties were obtained via the values of dielectric constant and dielectric loss which are another type of indirect measurement to study the porosity of the scaffolds. The porosity has the value of dielectric constant and loss air matrix whereby this air matrix is represented by the pore in the scaffold. The morphologies and microstructures were evaluated by using Scanning Electron Microscopic (SEM) and showed the increasing pore size as increasing the starch percentage. The Young’s modulus is obtained to study the mechanical strength of the scaffolds where Balik Wangi rice starch-nHA scaffolds have the highest value of young’s modulus due to fibre content in the rice. Whereas, the interaction of the starch and hydroxyapatite blends were analyzed via Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). Lastly, the crystallinity structure for all the rice starch-nHA scaffolds is studied via the X-Ray diffraction analysis and basically hydroxyapatite dominate the crystalinity structure of the scaffold.