Formation of calcium phosphates in gelatin with a novel diffusion system

The present paper demonstrated a novel and simple diffusion system to precipitate calcium phosphates in gelatin gel. In this system, a gelatin cup was specially used as the membrane separating reservoirs of calcium and phosphate ions. Relative to the conventional diffusion system, the novel one in our experiment decreased the time required for the deposition from 5-7 days to 20 h and increased the amount of the precipitated mineral phases significantly. The influence of pH values and concentrations of calcium and phosphate solutions buffered with Tris-HCl and NaOH, respectively, was investigated. The results showed that precipitation of the mineral phase at low pH values (7 for calcium and 11 for phosphate) and concentrations (200 mM for calcium and 15 mM for phosphate) resulted in the formation of plate-like octacalcium phosphate (OCP) crystals. With increasing the pH values of calcium and phosphate solutions to 8 and 12, respectively, spherical amorphous calcium phosphate (ACP) particles were obtained uniquely. Furthermore, flower-like hydroxyapatite (HAP) aggregates composed of many nano-sized needles were formed from the solutions with high pH values (8 for calcium and 12 for phosphate) and concentrations (500 mM for calcium and 37.5 mM for phosphate). The novel diffusion system is proposed to play an important role in both studying the process of biological mineralization and synthesizing calcium phosphates in different forms.