In this study, acetic acid (AA-2% w/v), a combination of acetic acid and citric acid (AA-1% w/v + CA-1% w/w), and three different concentrations of citric acid (CA-2, 4 and 6% w/w) were used to create chitosan solution. The FTIR analysis showed the presence of residual CA in all the CA-containing samples where no trace of AA was observed. The tensile strengths of the CA-containing samples were lower than the AA samples. Whereas the values for the elongation at break of the CA samples were higher than the AA samples, which kept increasing with an increasing CA content due to the plasticizing effect from residual citric acid. The elongation at break values for 4 and 6% CA-containing samples were 98% higher than the AA samples. The samples prepared with CA showed shorter LVE regions that reduced with an increasing CA concentration compared to the AA samples. Different acid concentrations did not have a large effect on the gelation time. However, CA-containing samples showed higher viscosities as compared to the AA-containing solution, which increased with an increasing CA content. The water vapour transmission rates of the CA-containing samples were lower than the others. All the chitosan solutions suppressed the growth of the two test strains, and none of the variants reached an abs 600 nm at 0.2.

In this study eight different phosphate-based glass compositions were prepared by melt-quenching: four in the (P2O5)45-(CaO)16--(MgO)24- system and four in the system (P2O5)50-(CaO)16--(MgO)24-, where and 10mol%. The effect of B2O3 addition on the thermal properties, density, molar volume, dissolution rates, and cytocompatibility were studied for both glass systems. Addition of B2O3 increased the glass transition (), crystallisation (), melting (), Liquidus () and dilatometric softening () temperature and molar volume (). The thermal expansion coefficient (α) and density () were seen to decrease. An assessment of the thermal stability of the glasses was made in terms of their processing window (crystallisation onset, minus glass transition temperature, ), and an increase in the processing window was observed with increasing B2O3 content. Degradation studies of the glasses revealed that the rates decreased with increasing B2O3 content and a decrease in degradation rates was also observed as the P2O5 content reduced from 50 to 45mol%. MG63 osteoblast-like cells cultured in direct contact with the glass samples for 14 days revealed comparative data to the positive control for the cell metabolic activity, proliferation, ALP activity, and morphology for glasses containing up to 5mol% of B2O3.

Previous studies investigating manufacture of phosphate-based glass fibres from glasses fixed with P₂O₅ content less than 50 mol% showed that continuous manufacture without breakage was very difficult. In this study, nine phosphate-based glass formulations from the system P₂O₅-CaO-Na₂O-MgO-B₂O₃ were prepared with P₂O₅ contents fixed at 40, 45 and 50 mol%, where Na₂O was replaced by 5 and 10 mol% B₂O₃ and MgO and CaO were fixed to 24 and 16 mol%, respectively. The effect of B₂O₃ addition on the fibre drawing, fibre mechanical properties and dissolution behaviour was investigated. It was found that addition of 5 and 10 mol% B₂O₃ enabled successful drawing of continuous fibres from glasses with phosphate (P₂O₅) contents fixed at 40, 45 and 50 mol%. The mechanical properties of the fibres were found to significantly increase with increasing B₂O₃ content. The highest tensile strength (1200 ± 130 MPa) was recorded for 45P₂O₅-16CaO-5Na₂O-24MgO-10B₂O₃ glass fibres. The fibres were annealed, and a comparison of the mechanical properties and mode of degradation of annealed and non-annealed fibres were investigated. A decrease in tensile strength and an increase in tensile modulus were observed for the annealed fibres. An assessment of the change in mechanical properties of both the annealed and non-annealed fibres was performed in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) at 37℃ for 28 and 60 days, respectively. Initial loss of mechanical properties due to annealing was found to be recovered with degradation. The B₂O₃-containing glass fibres were found to degrade at a much slower rate as compared to the non-B₂O₃-containing fibres. Both annealed and non-annealed fibres exhibited a peeling effect of the fibre's outer layer during degradation.