Optimizing the mechanical and surface topography of hydroxyapatite/Gd2O3/graphene oxide nanocomposites for medical applications

Abstract

A ternary nanocomposite (TNC) was fabricated for introducing multifunctional properties for various biomedical applications. The nanocomposites consist of hydroxyapatite (HAP) combined with/without graphene oxide (GO) and gadolinium oxide (Gd2O3). The lattice constants of HAP were around 9.4285 and 6.7476 Å, while for Gd2O3 was around 10.8441 Å. The morphological investigation detected the nanosheets of GO, and nanorods of HAP/Gd2O3 with length of 27 nm. Moreover, the topological study based on a field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) showed that HAP/GO had average roughness (Ra) of 4.8 nm, and the root mean square value (Rq) with a value of 7 nm. Furthermore, the average pore size reached 7.99 nm for the NC of HAP/GO. In addition, the cumulative surface area using the density functional theory (DFT) method was calculated at around 44.61 m2/g for TNC. The cell viability in vitro of osteoblast cell line improved from 95.6 ± 0.6% to 96.7 ± 0.5% which indicates the biocompatibility of the implants to be used in biomedical applications.

Keywords

• Gd2O3
• Graphene oxide
• Hydroxyapatite
• Antibacterial
• Bone scaffolding