Porosity, hardness and microstructure of nano-hydroxyapatite/PEG composite synthesized by co-precipitation temperature variations

Ceramic/polymer composites are currently being developed by researchers because of their wide applications in biomedical. This work describes the synthesis of hydroxyapatite/polyethylene glycol (nHAp/PEG) composites by the co-precipitation method with a composition ratio of 80:20 wt% and temperature variations of 25, 50, 75 °C. HAp was synthesized from limestone using the co-precipitation method. The properties of HAp and nHAp/PEG composites were evaluated using XRD, SEM, EDX and hardness that was tested by Vickers hardness. Synthetic HAp has a crystal size of 28.89 nm. The co-precipitation temperature affected the porosity and hardness of the nHAp/PEG composites, respectively for porosity of 2.98, 5.88, 8.82% and for hardness of 0.07, 0.05, 0.04 GPa. SEM results show a microstructure with a narrow grain size distribution, which means it is almost homogeneous. Hardness values in the range 0.04-0.07 GPa are appropriate for dentin applications.