Porous Magnesium Using Polymethyl Methacrylate (Pmma) As A Space Holder For Biomedical Application

Porous magnesium has been recognized as a promising biodegradation metal for bone substitute application because of its excellent biocompatibility, low density, ability to biodegrade in vivo and excellent mechanical properties. In the present work, porous magnesium was fabricated by powder metallurgy using spherical poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) as a space holder. To determine the optimum sintering temperature for porous magnesium fabrication, the porous magnesium was fabricated using double step sintering process at various sintering temperature (550°C, 585°C and 620°C) in first stage of research. The porous magnesium fabricated was then characterized for morphology, porosity, density, compressive strength and EDX. Density of porous magnesium increases and the porosity decreases with increasing sintering temperature. EDX analysis proved that PMMA was fully decomposed during sintering process. The mechanical characterization indicated that porous magnesium sintered at 620°C exhibited the highest compressive strength and density with optimum range of porosity of 39.37%. For second stage of research, porous magnesium with porosities of 39.38 – 40.82% was produced with different sizes of PMMA particles (38-63 μm, 63-90 μm and 90-125 μm). The compressive yield strength ranges between 19.95 MPa and 23.28 MPa and increases with decreasing PMMA particles size and porosity. Overall, the mechanical properties of porous Mg produced is in the range of compressive strength of natural bone. These results proven that the PMMA has a potential to be used as space holder in porous magnesium for biomedical application