Bone damages and defects are usual case in abituale life and medicine treatment. One of the treatment methods is grafting tissue. This treatment method is limited due to lack of the donator tissue. To overcome this problem, tissue engineering with glance of producing three dimensional scaffolds has grown to enhance body’s own regenerative capacity by stimulation genes that initiate repair at the site of damage or disease. Bioactive glass and hydroxyapatite are utilized bioceramics in bone tissue engineering. Despite of significant bioactivity of these bioceramics, their usage is limited due to their poor mechanical properties. Recently, forsterite has been used in medicine applications. Forsterite with proper mechanical properties and biocompatibility can use in porous implants under load cases. In the current study, hydroxyapatite and bioglass coated nanostructured forsterite foams were produced. Forsterite foam was fabricated via gelcasting method. Then hydroxyapatite and bioglass coating were deposited via sol-gel method under low pressure condition. The porosity of the foams was measured by Archimedes method. Their mechanical properties were evaluated by compressive tests. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), was used to characterize and evaluate the phase structure, crystallite size and size and morphology of the pores. To evaluate the bioactivity and bioresorbability of the porous body, soaking test in simulated body fluid was performed. SEM and EDS were used for diagnosis and confirmation of apatite formation. Release of ions was determined by inductive coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP- OES). Results showed that forsterite foam with compressive strength of about 7.2 MPa and HA and BG coated forsterite foam with compressive strength of about 7.5 MPa can be produced. Porosity of the foams was more than 75%, their grain size were less than 50 nanometer and their pore size was in the range of 60-320 micrometer. By deposition of HA and BG coatings on the forsterite foam, the compression strengths were increased slightly due to reducing the pure size and level of total porosities. In summary, by coating the forsterite foam mechanical properties along with higher biological properties was achieved. Keywords : Forsterite, Hydroxyapatite, Bioactive glass, Gelcasting, Foam
