As one of promising biomaterial, hydroxyapatite (HA) is potentially used as an implant component. Yet, to date, HA still encounter difficulties to be comerciallise due to the easily deteriorate and often fluctuate mechanical performance which depends on the manufacturing process. Thus, this study aims to experiment the influence of HA composition and sintering parameter on the densification, morphological analysis and flexural strength in terms of green parts and sintered HA. The HA parts are fabricated through the powder injection moulding process with the pressure applied between 10 and 12 bar at 150 ^oC. The HA compositions are varied of 54 wt.%, 55 wt.% and 56 wt.% while the sintering parameter are set at 1,100 ^oC, 1,200 ^oC and 1,300 ^oC. The 56 wt.% of HA parts recorded the densification of 2.13 g/cm³ and 2.95 g/cm³ for both green parts and sintered parts at 1,300 ^oC. However, as the sintering temperature reduced to 1,200 ^oC, the densification reached the value of 2.9 g/cm³ with the existence of porous structure to allow tissue growth. This finding suggested that the HA parts can be mass produce using powder injection moulding process at 1,200 ^oC, with a minimum existence of porosity to allow tissue growth in between the HA structure.

Keywords: powder injection moulding, flexural strength, densification