Facile microwave-assisted synthesis of Te-doped hydroxyapatite nanorods and nanosheets and their characterizations for bone cement applications

- The crystallinity was found to be enhanced and so the crystal size with Te doping.
- The enhancement in the relative permittivity was observed at some concentrations.
- The linear absorption coefficient was found to be enhanced by Te doping.
- Te doped HAp may be used for radiation shielding applications in medical.
- The antimicrobial activity was found to be enhanced with Te doping concentrations.

In this work, the authors have fabricated the nanorods and nanosheets of pure and Te-doped HAp with different Te concentrations (0.04, 0.08, 0.16, 0.24 wt%) by microwave-assisted technique at low temperature. The crystallite size, degree of crystallinity and lattice parameters are calculated. FE-SEM study confirms that the fabricated nanostructures are nanorods of diameter about 10 nm in undoped and at low concentration of Te doping. However, at and higher concentration, it becomes nanosheets of about 5 nm thickness. X-ray diffraction, FT-IR and FT-Raman studies shows that the prepared products are of HAp and Te has been successfully incorporated. From EDX the Ca/P molar ratio of the pure HAp is about 1.740, while this ratio for 0.04, 0.08, 0.16, 0.24 wt% Te doped is about 1.53, 1.678, 1.724, 1.792, respectively. Crystallite size was found to be increased with Te doping from 15 nm to 62 nm. The value of dielectric constant is found to be enhanced at higher concentrations of Te. The values of linear absorption coefficient were also determined and show that the prepared material with Te doping is more absorbable than pure and will be highly applicable in radiation detection applications. Furthermore, the antimicrobial potential of pure and Te doped HAp was examined against some Gram- negative and positive bacteria and fungi by agar disk diffusion method. The results demonstrated that the antimicrobial activity of Te doped HAp is stronger than that of pure HAp where it exhibited the highest activity against Bacillus subtilis > Candida albicans > Shigella dysenteriae.