Sol-gel synthesis of (Ca-Ba)TiO3 nanoparticles for bone tissue engineering

Piezoelectric materials are the group of smart materials which have been recently developed for biomedical applications, such as bone tissue engineering. These materials could provide electrical signals with no external source power making them effective for bone remodeling. Between various types of materials, BaTiO3 and CaTiO3 are nontoxic piezoelectric ceramics, which recently have been introduced for bone tissue engineering. It is expected that, the combination of these two ceramics could provide suitable piezoelectricity, bioactivity and biocompatibility for bone tissue engineering applications. The aim of this research is to synthesize (BaxCa1-x)TiO3 (x= 0, 0.6, 0.8, 0.9 and 1) nanopowder using sol-gel method. Moreover, the incorporation of Ca ions in the structure of (BaxCa1-x)TiO3 nanoparticles was chemically, structurally and biologically studied. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) studies confirmed the role of substituted Ca content on the chemical properties and morphology of particles. Indeed, increasing the amounts of Ca ions resulted in the reduced crystallite size. While incorporation of more than 20 at.% Ca resulted in the formation of a biphasic structure, monophasic solid solution without any secondary phase was detected at less Ca content. Moreover, SEM images revealed that Ca substitution reduced particle size from 70.5 ±12 nm to 52.4 ±9 nm, while the morphology of synthesized powders did not significacntly change. Furthermore, incorporation of upon 10 at.% Ca content within (BaxCa1-x)TiO3 significantly promoted MG63 proliferation compared to pure CaTiO3.