Investigation of nature of starting materials on the construction of hydroxyapatite 1D/3D morphologies

With the increasing requirement of bone repair materials, hydroxyapatite (HA) has been paid widely attention to investigation because of its good bioactivity and osteoconductivity. The structure of HA is a vital factor to expand its application in the field of hard tissue therapy. Thus, many strategies have been utilized in fabricating one-dimensional (1D) and three-dimensional (3D) nanostructured HA. In this paper, we successful synthesize HA with 1D nanofibers and 3D nanostructured microspheres using stearic acid as a template and different phosphates as phosphorus sources under the same synthetic system. The morphology of HA changes from nanofibers with high flexibility to nanostructured microspheres with good sphericity under the synergistic effect of stearic acid and various phosphates. The HA nanofibers and microspheres are promising for applications in biomedical fields. Base on characterization results, the formation mechanisms of HA nanofibers and HA microspheres self-assembled by nanorods are proposed. Furthermore, the HA morphology transition from nanofibers to nanostructured microspheres may be attributed to the formation of polyphosphate-induced water-in-oil microemulsion system in the synthesis process. The finding may provide a new direction to control HA morphology from 1D nanofibers to 3D microspheres based on previous strategies.