Zinc and strontium based phosphate glass beads: a novel material for bone tissue engineering.

Degradable phosphate-based glasses that contain strontium, zinc and calcium were investigated to examine their function as an osteoconductive material. Glass beads of the general formula of (PO)-(NaO)-(TiO)-(CaO)-(SrO) or (ZnO) were prepared by a melt quench technique followed by milling and spheroidisation. After performing x-ray diffraction on all the samples for glass structure evaluation, glass bead size distribution was initially measured by a scanning electron microscope (SEM).