Facile synthesis of dental enamel-like hydroxyapatite nanorod arrays via hydrothermal transformation of hillebrandite nanobelts

So far, the strategies for the synthesis of biomimetic dental enamel-like hydroxyapatite [Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2, HAp] have attracted great interest due to the extremely high orientation of HAp crystals. In the present study, a facile method via hydrothermal treatment of the hillebrandite [Ca2(SiO3)(OH)2] nanobelts as hard-templates in trisodium phosphate aqueous solutions was developed to synthesize the dental enamel-like HAp nanorod arrays, in the absence of any proteins, surfactants, organic solvents or organic molecule directing reagents. The morphology observations demonstrated that the highly oriented HAp arrays were constructed of uniform nanorods parallel to each other along the c-axis. A possible hard-template transformation mechanism based on the crystal structure and morphology of the hillebrandite nanobelts was proposed.