Preparation of bovine hydroxyapatite by transferred arc plasma

Hydroxyapatite (Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2, abbreviated as HA) is a kind of bioactive material that has received considerable attention over the past decades as an implant material due to its excellent biocompatability for clinical applications. In this work, Hydroxyapatite was obtained by plasma processing of the natural bovine bones by Transferred arc plasma (TAP) processing at 5 kW in argon plasma for different processing times (i.e. 30, 45, 60, 90 and 120 s). The TAP synthesized HA bioceramic was characterized by XRD, FTIR, SEM-EDX and TG-DTA analysis. The effect of TAP processing time on the preparation of organic free HA from bovine bone was studied. The study indicated that TAP processing for 30, 45 and 60 s were insufficient for removal of organics from the natural bovine bone. Organic free bovine HA was obtained for 90 s TAP processing with a Ca/P ratio of 1.93 comparable with commercially available natural HA-Endobon powder. Whereas 120 s of processing resulted in trivial thermal decomposition of HA in to its constituent phases. Thus our present investigation suggested that HA production from bovine bone using TAP processing is a time effective advantageous method in comparison to the annealing method.