Composite materials offers a good balance between strength and stiffness and exhibit enhanced properties compared to each separately component. In the last decade researchers paid attention to the combination at nanometric scale between inorganic and organic phase due to the expected enhanced properties: hardness, stiffness, mechanical resistance and fatigue resistance. For biomedical composites the most important property is the biocompatibility of the materials. It was demonstrated that synthetic polymers such as: polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyurethanes (PU), polytetrafluorethylene (PTFE), vinyl poly-chloride (PVC), polyamide (PA), polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), polycarbonate (PC), polyethylenetereftalat(PET)are biocompatible and are currently used in medical field.
The aim of the paper is to answer to the question if maleic anhydride copolymer acts as a grain growth modulator or as a biocompatible functionalisation agent for hydroxyapatite.
Experimental work was developed on : nanocomposites synthesis, characterization and citotoxicity tests.
Maleic anhydride copolymer - HAp nanocomposites were prepared by in situ functionalisation in hydrothermal conditions and were characterized by chemical quantitative analysis, XRD, FT-IR, SEM, specific surface area and picnometric densities.
Chemical bonding between copolymer carboxyl groups and calcium ions of HAp induced a peak at 1580 cm-1 in the FT-IR analysis. Following the evolution of this characteristic peak with the hydrothermal synthesis conditions (different temperatures and pressures) and corroborating the results with XRD and SEM analysis it was pointed out the copolymer grain growth modulator behavior concomittantly with the functionalization of HAp by the carboxylic groups of the copolymer.
Citotoxicity studies in vitro on mice fibroblast cultures were performed. The results proved the biocompatibility of new hybrid -polymer nanocomposites.