Factors Influencing the Interactions in Gelatin/Hydroxyapatite Hybrid Materials

Zixin Zhang; Kexin Li; Weixian Zhou; Jin'ge Gu; Ying Liu; Charles C Han; Shanshan Xu

doi:10.3389/fchem.2020.00489

Factors Influencing the Interactions in Gelatin/Hydroxyapatite Hybrid Materials

Front Chem. 2020 Jun 11:8:489. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2020.00489. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Zixin Zhang¹, Kexin Li¹, Weixian Zhou¹, Jin'ge Gu^{2

3

4}, Ying Liu⁴, Charles C Han¹, Shanshan Xu¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Advanced Study, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Joint Laboratory of Polymer Science and Materials, Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Diagnosis of Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Environmental Science, Hebei University, Baoding, China.
⁴ CAS Key Laboratory for Biomedical Effects of Nanomaterials and Nanosafety & CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of China, Beijing, China.

Abstract

The most severe problem in bone regeneration is the defect in the interface. We prepared four types of implantation scaffolds of crosslinked gelatin (GE)/hydroxyapatite (HAp) to study the factors influencing interface interactions, they are film-crosslinked GE scaffold, gel-crosslinked GE scaffold, solid-crosslinked GE/HAp scaffold and gel-crosslinked GE/HAp scaffold. HAp could penetrate the entire GE matrix completely in four successive steps: physical preparation of a gel; chemical crosslinking; incubation in modified simulated body fluid (m-SBF) and freeze-drying. The penetrative nucleation and growth of HAp and the influencing factors in the GE matrix were investigated to ameliorate the interface interactions between organic and inorganic layers. During development of penetrative nucleation and growth, a tight connection was built between organic and inorganic layers, B-type carbonated HAp was formed after incubation with m-BSF, and the apatite content could be controlled. In summary, enhanced interface relies on not only the pre-seeded hydroxyapatite (HAp) as crystal nuclei but also the sufficient space for ions with high concentration to diffuse in.

Keywords: gelatin; hydroxyapatite; interface force; nucleation mechanism; penetrating growth.