Biomineralization in chitosan/Bioglass® composite membranes under different dynamic mechanical conditions

Fundamental aspects of biomineralization may be important in order to understand and improve calcification onto the surface of biomaterials. The biomineralization process is mainly followed in vitro by assessing the evolution of the apatite layer that is formed upon immersion of the material in Simulated Body Fluid (SBF). In this work we propose an innovative methodology to monitor apatite deposition by looking at the evolution of the mechanical/viscoelastic properties of the sample while immersed in SBF, using non-conventional dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) performed under distinct displacement amplitudes (d). The biomimetic biomineralization process in composite membranes of chitosan (CTS) with Bioglass^® (BG) was followed by measuring the change of the storage modulus, E ′, and the loss factor, tan δ, at 37 °C and in SBF, both online (d = 10 μm and d = 30 μm) and offline (d = 0 μm). The online experiments revealed that the E ′ decreased continuously up in the first hours of immersion in SBF that should be related to the dissolution of BG particles. After that, an increase of the stiffness was verified due to the apatite deposition. SEM/EDS observations upon 24 h of immersion in SBF showed higher development of apatite deposition with increasing displacement amplitude.