Wet chemical synthesis of nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite flakes: effect of pH and sintering temperature on structural and morphological properties.

Wet chemical synthesis of hydroxyapatite (HAp) nanostructures was carried out with different solution pH values (9, 10 and 11) and sintering temperatures (300°C, 500°C, 700°C and 900°C). The effects of pH and sintering temperature on the structural and morphological properties of nanocrystalline HAp powders were presented. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis were performed to obtain the crystalline structure, chemical composition, morphology and particle size of the HAp powders. The TEM analysis is used in order to observe the rod- and flake-like HAp structures. XRD confirms the presence of both HAp hexagonal and monetite phases, although the monetite phase was less abundant in the resultant powders. Increase in pH reduced the monetite phase and enhanced Ca/P ratio from 1.7 to 1.83. Additionally, an increment in sintering temperature increased the crystallite size from 20 to 56 nm. The SEM analysis revealed the formation of semi-spherical and flake-like HAp structures with preferential flake morphology. An increase in pH and sintering temperature resulted in the growth and coalescence of crystals resulting in a porous capsular morphology. The FTIR analysis confirmed the reduction of carbonate stretching modes with an increase in pH and H-O-H antisymmetric stretching mode is eliminated for powders sintered at 900°C confirming the formation of stable and porous HAp powders.

Fractional fluctuation effects on the light scattered by a viscoelastic suspension.

We generalize fluctuating hydrodynamics to study the effect of fractional time derivatives on the light-scattering spectrum of a suspension in a viscoelastic solvent under an external density gradient. Viscoelasticity introduces additional memory effects into the fluctuating hydrodynamic equations, causing the time scales associated with the mesoscopic variables and those of the microscopic events to be no longer well separated. This situation is taken into account by introducing Caputo's fractional time derivative into the description. The structure factor of the suspension is calculated, and we find that its nonequilibrium correction is an odd function of the frequency. It exhibits a shift towards negative frequencies proportional to the magnitude of the imposed gradient. We consider solvents that are described by Maxwell's or power-law rheological equations of state. The fractional structure factor is compared with the nonfractional one, and it is found that the ratio of the former to the latter may be positive and up to two orders of magnitude for both types of viscoelasticity. This prediction of our model calculation suggests that this relative change might be measurable.