Preparation and performance of hydroxyapatite-graphene oxide composite microspheres

Yuan, JIAN Youliang, LI Ruilong, and WANG Tao College of Chemistry and Environmental Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518071, Guangdong Province, P. R. China Abstract: Drug-loaded microspheres have been widely studied and applied in biomedical materials, but there are still some open problems such as low drug loading and sudden release. In order to solve such problems, hydroxyapatite-graphene oxide (HA-GO) composite microspheres were prepared by using hydroxyapatite (HA) and graphene oxide (GO). Firstly, spherical calcium carbonate-graphene oxide (CaCO3-GO) composites were synthesized by hard template method. Then, spherical hollow HA-GO composite microspheres were successfully prepared by a method of hydrothermal-assisted ion exchange. The effect of different synthesis conditions on the prepared HA-GO composites was studied. Through a series of measurements, such as X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman infrared spectroscopy, field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), ultraviolet visible spectrophotometer (UV-VIS), etc., the prepared samples were analyzed and characterized. The drug-loading performance of the microspheres was tested by using curcumin as the drug-loading model, and the drug-loading performance was evaluated by two indicators of encapsulation efficiency and drug-loading capacity. At