Solid State Phenomena Vol. 307

Abstract: Age of monstrous amount of underutilized marine processing byproducts has been perceived as waste and many effort were given to utilize these materials in various application. With an incredible number of study on these byproducts, some compound were identified and apply for human utilization. Hydroxyapatite (HAp) is the main inorganic calcium phosphate mineral with excellent osteoconductivity, good bioactivity and biocompatibility. The production of HAp powder from synthetic process involves many chemicals with complicated procedures. Due to this matter, the raw HAp powder was extracted from natural sources selayang fish bones. Extortion process started with boiling fish bones to eliminate adherent fish meats. After calcination process fish bone were dried in room temperature before crushed by using grinder to obtain the powder. Next, the powder undergo calcination process at 900°C for 5 hours. The characterization of raw HAp was done via X-ray Diffraction, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectometer, Scanning Electron Microscopy, and Thermogravimetric analysis.

Abstract: Smart polymers have been one of the most popularly studied materials owing to their capability to alter physio-chemical behaviour upon exposure to specific external stimuli. The biocompatible thermally responsive poly (N-isopropylacrylamide), PNIPAm shows reversible transition between hydrophilic-hydrophobic characteristics at the vicinity of human physiological temperature has great potential to propel the development of smart tissue engineering scaffold and drug delivery. However, the limited availability and its high cost have dampened the extent of research on this polymer. To address these challenges, the current work demonstrates an economical lab-scale polymerization of crosslinked PNIPAm and the optimised parameters to produce mono-dispersed polymer hydrogel particles were investigated. Characterisation of the synthesized PNIPAm polymer revealed particle size polydispersity index of 0.215, indicative of distribution within the mono-dispersed range, with average hydrodynamic diameter of 346.3 nm. Zeta-potential of the synthesized PNIPAm was found to be -20.6 mV, suggesting an incipient instability in terms of colloidal coagulation. Viscosity of the synthesized PNIPAm (4 wt% concentration in methanol) was 28.6 cP. Thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) indicated the thermal degradation of main chain PNIPAm fell in the range of 340 to 480°C.

Abstract: In this study, we determine the effect of temperature and frequency on the acoustic properties of konjac glucomannan (KGM)-agar gels to confirm their compatibilities as tissue mimicking materials (TMMs). The acoustic properties of four samples; A (KGM-0.10 g agar), B (KGM-0.20 g agar), C (KGM-0.30 g agar) and D (KGM-0.40 g agar) were measured using pulse echo immersion technique. Findings indicated that the longitudinal velocities of all samples were increased while their attenuation coefficients were decreased as the temperature increased from 27.0 to 37.0°C. It also showed that the phase velocities of all samples were independent to frequency but their attenuation coefficients were increased as the frequency increased from 4.0 to 6.0 MHz. KGM-agar gels are compatible as soft TMMs since their acoustic properties are comparable with the acoustic properties of soft tissue.