Study of the effect of ordered porosity and surface silanization on in vitro bioactivity of sol-gel-derived bioactive glasses

The modification of porosity and surface silanization are efficient methods to improve physicochemical and biological properties of bioactive glass. For sol-gel-derived glasses, the use of surfactant in the synthesis medium allows to pattern porosity and may significantly impact their in vitro bioactivity. Additionally, surface functionalization by silanization may be a key method for grafting drugs or biomolecules to the glass surface. In this work, we realized a comparative study of the effect of porosity modification and surface silanization on in vitro bioactivity of sol-gel-derived bioactive glasses. The materials characterization by FTIR spectroscopy, XRD analysis, ICP-OES spectroscopy, and SEM-EDS, before and after soaking in SBF, showed that the ordered porosity increases significantly the kinetics of hydroxyl-carbonate apatite formation and induces a control of the mineralization at the glass surface. The results show also that the glass remains bioactive after silanization. The present work shows that porosity structuring improves the in vitro bioactivity of our glass and increases the silanization rate of the glass surface.