Novel synthesis of mesoporous hydroxyapatite using carbon nanorods as a hard-template

A novel hard-template synthesis approach for the fabrication of mesoporous hydroxyapatite (HAP) is described herein. Carbon nanorods, synthesised using mesoporous silica (SBA-15) and an acidified sucrose solution, are used as a hard template, after which, they are utilised to synthesise mesoporous HAP. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and nitrogen adsorption/Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), are all employed to characterise the synthesised materials. We demonstrate that this approach allows for the successful fabrication of single phase HAP with surface area 242.20±2.27 m² g⁻¹ and average pore diameter 3.5 nm and 18.9 nm. This work proposes for the first time a bespoke innovative procedure that employs carbon nanorods as a template for the synthesis of mesoporous HAP via a hard templating protocol.