Effect of heat-treatment on grain growth of nanocrystalline tricalcium phosphate powder synthesized via the precipitation method

Nanocrystalline tricalcium phosphate powder was synthesized via the solution-precipitation method followed by heat treatment in order to achieve phase evolution, which was then studied by XRD and TEM techniques. The crystallites sizes were estimated by the Scherrer method and results were confirmed by TEM micrographs. The experimental observations showed that nanocrystalline tricalcium phosphate can be successfully prepared from raw materials by the precipitation technique. This technique is a competitive method for nanocrystalline tricalcium phosphate synthesis compared to other techniques. Moreover, a simple kinetic growth investigation was performed on the nanocrystalline growth process during heat treatment. Results have shown growth rate to increase exponentially with temperature and the growth rate constants to increase with time. The average activation energies of tricalcium phosphate grain growth obtained by this method were 84.78 and 134.38 KJ/mol.