ABSTRACT
For a long time now, ceramic materials have been produced for application in the chemical, steel, and glass industries, where they can be employed in a variety of conditions, such as higher temperatures, lower environments, or reactive liquids. Bioceramics (or biomedical ceramics) must come into contact with organs or tissue constituents and are therefore exclusively related to the healthcare industry. The key distinction between bioceramics and other groups of materials is their capacity to survive in a biological configuration without causing harm to themselves or the environment. There are other bioceramics, which are not created by living things but share characteristics like composition, structure, and properties of biological materials. Bioceramics is a type of material use to repair or replace damaged bone tissue. Bioceramics can directly interact with the surrounding tissue, either supporting tissue growth or inducing new tissue regeneration for bioactive ceramics, depending on the application. As in the case of bioceramics, it can also remain inactive at the application site and serve as a mechanical load carrier. This chapter discusses various aspects of bioceramics, ranging from fundamental sciences and properties to applications. The ASTM/ISO standards and regulatory organization requirements for ceramic materials used in orthopedic applications are presented. Bioceramics’ new frontiers not only deal with bone repair, but also improve it when loaded with active biomolecules. This chapter also discusses recent trends such as mechanical properties (elastic properties, yield strength, and ductility, strength and failure, hardness, resilience, toughness, fracture toughness, and fatigue strength), physical properties, chemical properties of bioceramics (Al2O3, ZrO2, SiC, CaP, TCP, HA, etc.), applications in the medical field, implementation of different types of bioceramics in different fields like heart valve prostheses, total hip replacement prostheses, dental implant, osteosynthesis, bone replacement, rug delivery, and 3D-printed ceramic scaffolds related to in vitro–vivo performance and how the properties affect the applications. New research findings with industrial implications are presented in order to better understand the applications of ceramic materials in load-bearing (loads as tension, compression, shearing, torsion, and bending) and low-load-bearing implants, as well as future development directions and the emergence of “advanced materials” to solve a challenging barrier at the intersection of biology, medicine, and material science.
