Optimizing the mechanical and surface topography of hydroxyapatite/Gd2O3/ Graphene oxide nanocomposites for medical applications
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 structural analysis was done using x-ray diffraction (XRD) and the hexagonal symmetry of HAP was detected besides the cubic crystal structure of Gd2O3. The lattice constants of HAP were around 9.4285 and 6.7476 Å, while for Gd2O3 was around 10.8441 Å. Further, the chemical investigation was done using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) which confirmed the existence of all elements with a Ca/P ratio of 1.4. The morphological investigation detected the nanosheets of GO, and nanorods of HAP/ Gd2O3 with diameter and length decreased to 9.5 and 27 nm respectively. Moreover, the topological study based on a field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) showed that HAP/GO had the highest average roughness parameter (Ra) with around 4.8 nm, and the highest root mean square roughness 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 human 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.