| Over the past few decades, a little word with big potential has been rapidly insinuating into the world's consciousness, nano. The nano-scale structures permit the control of fundamental properties of the materials without changing their chemical structure. Living organisms can create amazing ways to produce high performance materials that involve not only creation of implants, replacing bone tissues and organs, but also synthesis of biologically active materials promoting the fullest restoration of tissues and maintenance of necessary functions of an organism. In the biomaterial research field, nowadays, a great attention is given to bone substitute materials, particularly, calcium phosphate based bio-materials play important roles in clinical applications as it possesses high bio-compatibility and excellent ability to undergo varying degrees of resorbability. These materials show a positive interaction with living tissue that includes differentiation of immature cells towards bone cells and also have chemical bonding to the bone along the interface, thought to be triggered by the adsorption of bone growth-mediating proteins at the bio-materials surface. In the present review paper an attempt is made to cover properties and applications of various phosphate nano bio-materials like calcium phosphate, calcium polyphosphate, calcium pyrophosphate etc over a time span right from 1920 to 2016. This suggests plenty of opportunities for interdisciplinary research. |
full paper (pdf, 672 Kb)