Influence of synthetic methodologies on the particle size of Hydroxyapatite

Hydroxyapatite (HAP) is the major mineral constituent of bones and teeth. It has been well documented that HAP nanoparticles can significantly increase the biocompatibility and bioactivity of man-made biomaterials. Since last decade, the HAP nanoparticles have increasingly been in demand and extensive efforts have been devoted to develop many synthetic routes to synthesis it. Several investigations have also been made to determine how critical properties viz. crystallite size, shape, phase purity, mechanical strength of HAP can be effectively controlled by varying the processing parameters. With such a wide spectrum of methods available for the preparation of HAP nanoparticles, choosing a specific procedure to synthesize a optimum quality powder can be laborious. Hence, in our present investigation we try to evaluate the Hydroxyapatite crystals synthesized through three different methodologies. The methodologies adopted were hydrothermal, microwave and precipitation methods. The calcium and phosphorus precursors were chosen with molar ratio of 1: 0.6 to achieve the synthetic bone apatite. The prepared samples with different synthetic methods were characterized using XRD, SEM, EDX and FTIR to ascertain the crystalline size, phase structure, morphology, stoichiometric Ca/P ratio and the functional groups. KeywordsBiomaterial, Hydroxyapatite, Nanoparticles