Influence of titania content on mechanosynthesis of chlorapatite–titania composite nanopowders

The effect of titania content on mechanochemical synthesis of chlorapatite–titania composite nanopowders was studied for the first time. According to the obtained data, the phase compositions, structural features as well as morphological characteristics of the composites were influenced by the titania content. In the presence of 3–5 wt% titania, milling for 5 h resulted in the formation of chlorapatite–titania composite nanopowders. The crystallite size of the samples was around 25±1 and 23±1 nm in the presence of 3 and 5 wt% titania, respectively. With increasing the titania content to 7 wt%, no chemical reaction happened during the milling. The composite nanopowders showed high volume fraction of grain boundaries. Based on the FT-IR results, the products had high chemical purity which is very important in biomedical applications. The TEM images indicated that the composite nanopowder was composed of spheroidal particles with a mean size of around 35 nm. The proposed synthesis strategy provides a facile pathway to obtain novel chlorapatite-based composite nanopowders with high purity and optimal properties.