Proceedings of the 18th International Symposium on Ceramics in Medicine, The Annual Meeting of the International Society for Ceramics in Medicine (ISCM), Kyoto, Japan, 5-8 December 2005. Published in : Key Enggineering Materials, vol. 309 - 311Bioactive polymeric microspheres can be produced by pre-coating them with a calcium
silicate solution and the subsequent soaking in a simulated body fluid (SBF). Such combination
should allow for the development of bioactive microspheres for several applications in the medical
field including tissue engineering. In this work, three types of polymeric microspheres with different
sizes were used: (i) ethylene-vinyl alcohol co-polymer (20-30 'm), (ii) polyamide 12 (10-30 'm) and
(iii) polyamide 12 (300 'm). These microspheres were soaked in a calcium silicate solution at 36.5ºC
for different periods of time under several conditions. Afterwards, they were dried in air at 100ºC for
24 hrs. Then, the samples were soaked in SBF for 1, 3 and 7 days. Fourier transformed infrared
spectroscopy, thin-film X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscopy showed that after the
calcium silicate treatment and the subsequent soaking in SBF, the microspheres successfully formed a
bonelike apatite layer on their surfaces in SBF within 7 days due to the formation of silanol (Si-OH)
groups that are quite effective for apatite formation.I. B. Leonor thanks the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for providing her a PhD scholarship (SFRH/BD/9031/2002) and the European Union funded STREP Project HIPPOCRATES (NMP3-CT-2003-505758) and the European NoE EXPERTISSUES (NMP3-CT-2004-500283)