Project Registration Code: PN-II-RU-TE-2011-3-0032

New bioactive glasses and glass-ceramics doped with selenium and molybdenum: synthesis, structural and biological properties

Grant description

The research will focus on the synthesis and characterization of new classes of bioactive materials: silicate and phosphate - based glasses and glass-ceramics doped with molybdenum and selenium. Having in view, all aspects above discussed, we want to focus our future research on the field of silicate and phosphate-based bioactive glasses and glass-ceramics doped with molybdenum and selenium. Both, molybdenum and selenium are essential mineral trace of the human body and their influence on the structural properties and biological performance in silicate and phosphate-based glasses hasnot been reported in the scientific journal, yet. Moreover, we plan to investigate the possibility of development antibacterial and antifungal behavior in these glasses and glass- ceramics as a consequence of molybdenum and selenium ions presence inside. It is known that both selenium and molybdenum are essential trace for the human body: selenium-essential component of a key antioxidant enzyme, necessary for normal growth and development, role in detoxification of heavy metals (such as mercury), role in production of antibodies by the immune system, component of teeth and molybdenum-contributes to normal growth and development, key component in many enzyme systems including enzymes involved in detoxification. So that, we consider that tacking our future research work on this new category of bioactive materials we’ll contributed to the knowledge improvement of this scientific area. Choosing to analyze both silicate and phosphate-based glasses and glass-ceramics doped with two mineral trace elements we try to minimize the research failure risk since any research on new subject is accompanied by it.
Since we’ll investigate a new category of materials, there are a lot of open problems imposed by our goal: to establish appropriates methods of materials synthesis, to find the right preparation parameters (starting materials, temperature, period of melting, etc.), to establish the right thermal treatment parameters and their influence on the materials structure, to investigate structural and biological properties. The samples synthesis will be done using two methods: sol-gel synthetic technique and conventional melt-quenching technique in order to obtain homogeneous glasses with desired composition and properties.
It is well known that the cell response depends not only on chemical composition, but also on the surface roughness, porosity, topography, grain size and crystallinity of the materials. So that a lot of complementary technique will be used to analyze the samples structure: X-rays diffraction, Differential Thermal Analysis (DTA), Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM )Raman and Infrared Spectroscopy. In vitro bioactivity will be analyzed using the simulated body fluid (if the response are promising the materials will be followed up in vitro cell) and the antimicrobial behavior will be studied using test on gram-positive and gram–negative bacteria (in association with the Biology Department). All data will be correlated in order to attain a relevant characterization of these new classes of bioactive glasses and glass-ceramics designed for possible medical application.