Sub-Band Gap Absorption Mechanisms Involving Oxygen Vacancies in Hydroxyapatite

Hydroxyapatite (HAp) is a widely used biomaterial for the preparation of bone and dental implants. Despite the relevance of HAp in medicine, exciting applications involving this material as a biocompatible photocatalyst depend on how well we understand its fundamental properties. Experimental evidence suggests that oxygen vacancies play a critical role in the production of surface radicals upon exposure of HAp to ultraviolet (UV) light. However, very little is known about the underlying physical and chemical details. We present a hybrid density functional study of the structural and electronic properties of oxygen vacancies in large HAp supercells within the plane-wave formalism. We find that under equilibrium conditions, vacancies occur either as a simple vacant oxygen site (in the neutral charge state) or as extended structures replacing several crystalline moieties (in the double plus charge state). Large atomic relaxations upon ionization make the oxygen vacancy a negative-U defect, where the single plus charge state is metastable, being only accessible under UV excitation. From inspection of the transition levels, we find that electron promotion from the valence band top to the donor state of the vacancy involves a zero-phonon transition of 3.6–3.9 eV. This mechanism is the most likely explanation to the 3.4–4.0 eV absorption onset for the observation of photocatalysis using HAp under persistent UV illumination.