Hydroxyapatite scaffolds hydrothermally grown from aragonitic cuttlefish bones

Abstract

Scaffolds of pure AB-type carbonated hydroxyapatite (HA) were successfully produced via hydrothermal transformation (HT) of aragonitic cuttlefish bones at 200 °C. Beyond low production cost, worldwide availability and natural biological origin of raw materials, the produced scaffolds preserved the initial structure of the cuttlefish bone, featuring pore size of ∼80 µm in width and ∼100 µm in height. The transformation was complete after 9 h and no intermediate products were registered. The kinetics were fast, since, HA was the dominant crystalline phase after only 1 h of HT. The HA crystallites formed had a size of nanoscale (∼20–50 nm) and were randomly oriented.