Freeze Foaming for In Vivo Studies

For in vivo studies, the potential of using the Freeze Foaming process and manufacturing structural hybrids was assessed for the manufacture of artificial rat bones. A femoral bone from an 11-week-old rat was scanned using computer tomography followed by CAD file reverse-engineering. From this, a femoral bone segment was chosen, and single Freeze Foams as well as structural hybrids were manufactured (see Section 2.4). In addition to using HAp as the initial material, ZrO2 (TZ-3YS-E; Co. TOSOH with a d50 = 0.7 μm) was used as a bioinert counterpart for manufacturing porous Freeze Foams. In doing so, we hoped to be able to differentiate between material effects and structural effects regarding possible in vitro/vivo results. Ideally, the Freeze Foam's characteristic porous structure/pore morphology would perform independently from the bioceramic materials.
