Effect of different precipitation procedures on the properties of nano‐hydroxyapatite/poly‐lactic‐co‐glycolic acid composite

Precipitation procedure is an important procession step for inorganic/polymer nanocomposite, which has significant effect on mechanical property of nanocomposite. In this article, five different precipitation procedures were separately adopted to obtain nano‐hydroxyapatite/poly‐lactic‐co‐glycolic acid (n‐HA/PLGA) composite, including evaporation desiccation, positive direction precipitate with absolute alcohol or petroleum ether, negative direction precipitate with absolute alcohol or petroleum ether. The production morphology, residue monomer content in production, microstructure of fracture surface, crystallization, and mechanical property of n‐HA/PLGA composite were investigated. The results showed that the n‐HA/PLGA composite obtained by negative direction precipitate with absolute alcohol had filamentous production, the least residue monomer content, the best dispersion of n‐HA and the best crystallization nucleating effectiveness in PLGA matrix, so that it had the highest bending strength, while the n‐HA/PLGA composite obtained by evaporation desiccation had the lowest bending strength, which suggested that negative direction precipitate with absolute alcohol is the best precipitation procedure to obtain n‐HA/PLGA composite. POLYM. COMPOS., 34:1158–1162, 2013. © 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers