Polymer Nanocomposites Based on Poly(ε-caprolactone), Hydroxyapatite and Graphene Oxide

Standard and hybrid polymer nanocomposites based on poly(ɛ-caprolactone) (PCL), hydroxyapatite (HAp) and graphene oxide (GO). The GO synthetized here is made up of multilayer graphene oxide (mGO), in which up to five layers are stacked and lateral size around of 1 µm. The nanocomposites (PCL/Hap, PCL/mGO and PCL/HAp/mGO) were prepared by melt mixing in a twin-screw extruder and characterized by mechanical test, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), contact angle (CA), surface zeta potential by streaming and cell proliferation. The HAp content was maintained at 20% (w/w) while mGO was used at three levels of content (0.05, 0.1, and 0.3 w/w). In terms of bulk properties, the presence of mGO even in very low content (0.05 to 0.3%) was very effective in order to increase mechanical properties of PCL (stress and strain at beak and tenacity) while HAp tends to decrease them. When the two fillers are inserted mGO act to recover the properties lost by the presence of HAp. TEM images showed single GO sheets very well dispersed alone or combined with HAp. For surface properties, significant changes have been achieved by the presence of mGO, HAp and mGO/HAp. The water contact angle drops to values below 90° for all nanocomposites making the material hydrophilic, but again by the presence of only 0.05% of mGO it was reached easily. Surface ξ-potential for all nanocomposite was lower than neat PCL. As a consequence of surface modifications improvements in cell proliferation ability could be also observed. All modification by the presence of GO point out these materials as excellent candidates to resorbable suture, drug delivery system, and bone graft substitutes.