Abstract
Ceramics play a crucial role in regenerative medicine by stimulating cells toward proliferation, differentiation and generating an extracellular matrix that closely resembles the body’s natural tissues. Chemical and physical properties of ceramics offer cells both mechanical and chemical cues, ultimately influencing their behavior and function. As it was mentioned before, the inspiration for developing biomaterials often comes from the properties of natural substances and their structures. This approach is highly effective due to the extensive natural evolution over millions of years, resulting in advanced systems and materials. Although ceramics, glasses and glass-ceramics are mostly associated with hard tissue engineering because of their mechanical properties, they have achieved applications in soft tissue engineering mostly through controlled release of ions which interact with various cell types. In this chapter, not only mechanical properties, crystallinity, and chemical composition but also physical attributes of ceramics such as electrical conductivity and piezoelectricity, which play a significant role in both soft and hard tissue engineering have been discussed.
