Browsing by Author "Prof. Dr. Aqif Anwar Chaudhry"

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    Flow Synthesis of Nanobioceramics - Assessing Repeatability and Scalability
    (Library Information Services COMSATS University Islamabad Lahore Campus, 2023-02-27) Adnan Haider; SP22-R06-005; Prof. Dr. Aqif Anwar Chaudhry; LHR TP 8644
    Bone diseases affect millions of people worldwide. These defects may result from either osteoporosis or osteopenia (which ultimately causes osteoporosis). Accidents, trauma, sports injuries, ageing, or pathogenic infections like osteomyelitis can also result in bone abnormalities/fractures. Treatment for these necessitates bone repair and regeneration. A large variety of techniques are used for this purpose. These include the use of autografts, allografts and xenografts. These are associated with added morbidity, risk of infection and ethical concerns often including halal product preferences of Muslim patients. Therefore, synthetic materials such as Hydroxyapatite are of key interest for use in bone repair. Hydroxyapatite (HA) is similar to biological apatite, the mineral component of bone. Traditionally Hydroxyapatite can be synthesized using batch wet-chemical and high temperature processes. In these routes, synthesis of stoichiometric and thermally stable HA often takes more than 24 hours (reaction and ageing times) followed by the need of a subsequent heat-treatment step to improve the crystallinity of the precipitated apatite. Strict control over parameters for extended periods of time is often required in addition to the use of expensive organic additives in certain cases. On the other hand, flow synthesis of particles is a technique that has lately been used to synthesize nanoparticles continuously whilst offering tailor-ability through variable parameters. These include time, temperature, pressure, concentration and reaction system geometry etc. In the proposed project, a unique flow synthesis system has been used to synthesize hydroxyapatite particles in a single step. Effects of key flow synthesis parameters – temperature and flow rate (hence reaction time) – on particle size, morphology and phase-purity was determined. Optimum set of parameters were identified and triplicated in order to assess results repeatability. Furthermore, the optimum reaction parameters were used to scale up HA