Advances in Bioceramics and Porous Ceramics III

This issue contains the proceedings of the Porous Ceramics:Novel Developments and Applications and NextGeneration Bioceramics symposia, which were held on January24-29, 2010 at the Hilton Daytona Beach Resort and the Ocean Centerin Daytona Beach, Florida, USA.The interaction between ceramic materials and living organismsis a leading area of ceramics research. Novel bioceramic materialsare being developed that will provide improvements in diagnosis andtreatment of medical and dental conditions. In addition,bioinspired ceramics and biomimetic ceramics have generatedconsiderable interest in the scientific community. The NextGeneration Bioceramics symposium addressed several leadingareas related to the development and use of novel bioceramics,including advanced processing of bioceramics; biomineralization andtissue-material interactions; bioinspired and biomimetic ceramics;ceramics for drug delivery; ceramic biosensors; in vitro and invivo characterization of bioceramics; mechanical properties ofbioceramics; and nanostructured bioceramics.The Porous Ceramics symposium aimed to bringtogether engineers and scientists in the area of ceramic materialscontaining high volume fractions of porosity, in which the porosityranged from nano- to millimeters. These materials have attractedsignificant academic and industrial attention for use inenvironmental applications, an area where ceramics, particularlyporous ones, play a key role because of their suitable properties.Therefore, a significant number of contributions, of which some arepresent in this volume, was devoted to the fabrication andcharacterization of porous ceramics for gas purification (e.g.,H2 separation and CO2 separation) as well asto particulate filtration (e.g., diesel engine soot).A leading area of ceramics research involves the development ofporous ceramics for medical, dental, and biotechnologyapplications. For example, porous ceramics are under developmentfor use as bone substitutes because a porous structure may enhancetissue ingrowth. Therefore, tailoring of porosity to give specificcharacteristics, in terms of the amount of interconnecting cellsand of the cell and cell window size is required. A joint sessioninvolving participants from bioceramics and porous ceramicssymposia was therefore held in order to stimulate discussion andproductive interactions between the two scientific communities.