Nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite–polyaspartate composites

Issue title: 2nd International Conference on New Biomedical Materials, 5–8 April 2003, Cardiff, Wales, UK

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Bigi, A.^; | Boanini, E. | Gazzano, M. | Rubini, K. | Torricelli, P.

Affiliations: Dipartimento di Chimica“G. Ciamician” and ISOF‐CNR, via Selmi 2, 40126 Bologna, Italy | Servizio di Chirurgia Sperimentale – Istituto di Ricerca Codivilla Putti IOR, Bologna, Italy

Note: [] Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 051 2099551; Fax: +39 051 2099456; E‐mail: adriana.bigi@unibo.it.

Abstract: The direct synthesis of hydroxyapatite–poly‐L‐aspartic acid (HA–PASP) nanocrystals has been carried out in presence of increasing amounts of PASP in solution up to 56 mmol/l. WAXS, TEM, TGA, IR and chemical analyses were used to characterize the structure, morphology and composition of the products. PASP is quantitatively incorporated into HA crystals, provoking a reduction of the coherent length of the crystalline domains. Furthermore, composite crystals display a greater length/width ratio with respect to the control HA crystals, and show a remarkable trend towards aggregation. The broadening of the X‐ray diffraction reflections indicate a reduction of the coherent length along the long dimension 002 and the cross section 310 of the apatite crystals. The comparison between the morphological and structural data allows to suggest a specific interaction between PASP and HA structure.

Keywords: Hydroxyapatite, poly‐L‐aspartic acid, nanocrystals, crystal size, X‐ray diffraction

Journal: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 573-579, 2004