Effect of Surfactants on the Structure and Adsorption Efficiency of Hydroxyapatite Nanorods

Porous hydroxyapatite (HAp) nanorods using surfactant templating proceeded via microwave irradiation method. Study of BET surface area measurement of the HAp nanorods showed that surface area of HAp nanorods with a mixture of cat-anionic surfactants was higher (56.16 m2/g) than their individual counterpart (for anionic 52.8 m2/g and for cationic 48.8 m2/g) as well as without surfactant (19.07 m2/g) due to higher synergistic effect and low critical aggregation concentration of the mixture. Surfactant-directed synthesis of porous HAp has been explored in literature, but the relation between the pore size distribution, surface area and morphology and choice of surfactant(s) was not fully understood and hence in this work we have explored those parameters. The rod shape morphology and the crystal structure of the synthesized HAp nanomaterial were observed by FESEM, HRTEM, and XRD. Due to the higher surface area, HAp nanorods synthesized from the cat-anionic mixture, act as a better adsorbent for dyes and metal ions. The maximum adsorption of dye (methylene blue) was found to be 833.3 mg/g whereas for heavy metal ions like Pb2+ and Cd2+ were 909 and 714.28 mg/g respectively. The kinetic mechanism, the effects of adsorbate pH, temperature, contact time and adsorbent concentration on the dye and metal ions removal were also explored. The antibacterial property of HAp nanorods after doping with silver was investigated against the gram-negative Escherichia coli and gram-positive Bacillus subtilis bacteria by measuring minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) method.