Biopolymer hydroxyapatite composite materials: Adding fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy to the characterization toolkit

Abstract

Biopolymers are frequently used due to their sourcing from renewable resources, widespread abundance, and cheap procurement costs. When combined with hydroxyapatite (HA), these materials are often used as restorative materials by general and oral health care providers and in veterinary medicine due to their unique properties of mimicking their biological congeners. When designing the next generation of restorative materials, it will be critical to understand the interactions between biopolymers and HA on micron and submicron length scales, which will require expanding the characterization toolkit. Fluorescence microscopy is one powerful tool for investigating materials on these length scales. Fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM), a technique that measures the fluorescence lifetime of fluorophores based on local environments, could be used to observe the structural properties of materials. In this review, FLIM is discussed as an addition to the characterization toolkit for its potential to provide unique insights into biocomposite material structure‐property relationships. Additional topics include structure‐property processing relationships, imaging and metrology technique advances, and the ability of FLIM to complement these techniques. Overall, this review complements the literature by providing a new methodology to uncover previously unknown information through microscopy.