Hydroxyapatite scaffolds hydrothermally grown from aragonitic cuttlefish bones

摘要

Scaffolds of pure AB-type carbonated hydroxyapatite (HA) were successfully produced via hydrothermal transformation (HT) of aragonitic cuttlefish bones at 200 deg C.Beyond low production cost,worldwide availability and natural biological origin of raw materials,the produced scaffolds preserved the initial structure of the cuttlefish bone,featuring pore size of approx 80 mu m in width and approx 100 mu m in height.The transformation was complete after 9 h and no intermediate products were registered.The kinetics were fast,since,HA was the dominant crystalline phase after only 1 h of HT.The HA crystallites formed had a size of nanoscale (approx 20-50 nm) and were randomly oriented.