Strontium and zinc co-substituted nanophase hydroxyapatite

It is well documented that biological hydroxyapatite (HA) differs from pure and synthetically produced HA, and contains of a mixture of calcium phosphate (CaP) phases in addition to a range of impurity ions, such as strontium (Sr²⁺), zinc (Zn²⁺), magnesium (Mg²⁺), fluoride (F^-) and carbonate(CO₃^2-), but to name a few. Further to this, biological apatite is generally in the form of rod (or needle-like) crystals in the nanometre (nm) size range, typically 60 nm in length by 5–20 nm wide. In this study, a range of nano-hydroxyapatite (nHA), substituted nHA materials and co-substituted nHA (based on Sr²⁺ and Zn²⁺) were manufactured using an aqueous precipitation method. Sr²⁺ and Zn²⁺ were chosen due to the significant performance enhancements that these substitutions can deliver. The materials were then characterised using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) techniques. The TEM results show that all of the samples produced were nano-sized, with Zn-substituted nHA being the smallest crystals around 27 nm long and 8 nm wide. The FTIR, XRD and XPS results all confirm that the materials had undergone substitution with either Sr²⁺ and Zn²⁺, for Ca²⁺ within the HA lattice (or both in the case of the co-substituted materials). The FTIR results confirmed that all of the samples were carbonated, with a significant loss of hydroxylation as a consequence of the incorporation of Sr²⁺ and Zn²⁺ into the HA lattice. None of the materials synthesised here in this study contained any other impurity CaP phases. Therefore this study has shown that substituted and co-substituted nanoscale apatites can be prepared, and that the degree of substitution (and the substituting ion) can have a profound effect of the attendant materials’ properties.