Morphological effects of variant carbonates in biomimetic hydroxyapatite

We prepared nano-carbonated hydroxyapatite (CHA) with different additions of carbonated contents at room temperature. The resulting materials were tested by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) respectively. Results were shown that the materials were platelet-like CHA polycrystals that were similar to natural bone minerals, except for the material sample with the highest carbonated content. The presence of carbonated content in hydroxyapatite (HA) significantly decreased the crystallinity of synthesized CHA. Moreover, the morphological change of CHA was observed with the increase of carbonated content. The sequence of morphological change was from flat-like platelet, needle-arrayed platelet, particle-consisted platelet, smaller platelet, and finally spherical particle. This tendency is accordant to controllable solubility of biological HA with certain carbonated content. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.