Effect of magnesium ion (Mg2+) substitution and calcination to the properties of biphasic calcium phosphate (BCP)

Biphasic Calcium Phosphate (BCP) is a bioceramic material used widely for bone restoration. Addition of magnesium (Mg) as dopant in BCP structure will further improved its biological properties. In this work, Mg-doped BCP (Mg-BCP) was synthesized via aqueous precipitation method at room temperature and pressed into pellet body before calcined. The objective was to study the effect of Mg ion substitution toward the mechanical properties of the BCP subjected to three different calcination temperatures (600 °C, 700 °C and 800 °C). As-synthesized undoped BCP powder was used as the reference in this study. The calcined BCP and Mg-BCP was characterized using XRD to analyze the phase presence and their crystal structure. Furthermore, the morphology analysis using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) was used. The Vickers hardness was used to study the physical properties of the pellet samples. Based on the XRD results, for undoped BCP pellet only single phase of HA presence for all three temperatures, whereas for doped BCP, β-TCP phase was formed at 700 °C rather than only HA. Thus, it proved that the substitution of magnesium into BCP structure was able to stabilize the β-TCP phase. Furthermore, the formation of β-TCP decreases the hardness value of pellets. Moreover, the presence of porous structure due to the increasing of temperature also contribute towards the decline of the hardness value trend.