The effect of high-energy ball milling parameters on the preparation and characterization of fluorapatite nanocrystalline powder

The aim of this work was to evaluate the effect of ball milling parameters on the synthesis of fluorapatite nanopowder; also, the effect of fluoridation on bioresorbability and bioactivity of apatite was studied. Fluoridated hydroxyapatite nanopowders with 100% (fluorapatite, FA) were synthesized via mechanical alloying method. The results showed that the size and number of balls had no significant effect on the synthesizing time and grain size of FA, while decreasing the rotation speed or ball to powder weight ratio increased synthesizing time and the grain size of FA. In vitro test indicated that the bioactivity of FA was less than HA since the dissolution rate, precipitation amount and the size of precipitated bone-like apatite crystals on the surface of FA samples was clearly lower than HA. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l. All rights reserved.