Evaluation of mechanical properties of hydroxyapatite-silver nanocomposite for dental engineering applications

Abstract

Hydroxyapatite bioceramic has low bactericidal and mechanical properties, especially fracture toughness, which may limit its common use in medicine. This study aims to prepare composites of nanoparticles from hydroxyapatite and silver nanoparticles as reinforcements. The composites were fabricated at several concentrations of silver (3, 6, 9, and 12 vol%) by the powder metallurgy method, with specimens compacted under uniaxial pressing and a conventional powder sintering process. The mechanical properties of composites were investigated in this work, such as the compression strength, Vickers hardness, and fracture toughness; also, the structural properties of the material were examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique. The results indicated that adding Ag led to improved fracture toughness, compression strength, and Vickers hardness of the HA/Ag composites, and reached the maximum values at 9vol%, then the values dropped. The better ratio for adding Ag was 9%; after this ratio, the properties of the prepared composites will decrease in their values.