Homogeneous chitosan/carbonate apatite/citric acid nanocomposites prepared through a novel in situ precipitation method

Homogeneous nanocomposites composed of carbonate apatite and chitosan in the presence of citric acid were synthesized by a novel in situ precipitation method. The morphological and componential properties of composites were investigated. The carbonate apatite particulates, in sizes of about 50–100 nm, were distributed within the network chitosan hydrogel homogeneously, moreover, inorganic particles could be controlled by the size of networks of organic matrix which was mediated with crosslink degree of chitosan. Through highly magnified TEM observation, it can be shown that inorganic particles were composed of more fine sub-particles whose diameters were between 2 and 5 nm in size without regular crystallographic orientation. The concept of multiple-order template mediation was brought forward for the first time. A novel hierarchical porous nanocomposite scaffold was also prepared by multilevel freeze-drying technique and its mechanical performance had obvious increase compared with neat chitosan. These results provided an efficient approach toward new biomimetic tissue scaffold for the biomedical applications with enhanced intensity/bioactivity and controlled resorption rates.