The ubiquitous mineralization of calcium phosphate (CaP) facilitates biological organisms to produce hierarchically structured minerals. The coordination number and strength of Ca 2+ ions with phosphate species, oxygen-containing additives, and solvent molecules played a crucial role in tuning nucleation processes and surface stability of CaP under the simulated body fluid (SBF) or aqueous solutions upon the addition of oligomeric lactic acid (LACn, n=1, 8) and changing pH values. As revealed by ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD), density functional theory (DFT), and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations as well as high-throughput experimentation (HTE), the binding of LAC molecules with Ca 2+ ions and phosphate species could stabilize both pre-nucleation clusters and brushite (DCPD, CaHPO4• 2H2O) surface through intermolecular electrostatic and hydrogen bonding interactions. When the concentration of Ca 2+ ions ([Ca 2+ ]) is very low, the amount of the formed precipitation decreased with the addition of LAC based on UV-Vis spectroscopic analysis due to the reduced chance for the LAC capped Ca 2+ ions to coordinate with phosphates and the increased solubility in acid solution. With the increasing [Ca 2+ ] concentration, the kinetically stable DCPD precipitation was obtained with high Ca 2+ coordination number and low surface energy. Morphologies of DCPD precipitation are in plate, needle, or rod, depending on the initial pH values that tuned by adding NH3•H 2O, HCl, or CH3COOH. The prepared samples at pH ≈ 7.4 with different Ca/P ratios exhibited negative zeta potential values, which were correlated with the surface electrostatic potential distributions and potential biological applications.3
INTRODUCTIONBones and teeth of vertebrates are known to come from mineralization of calcium phosphate (CaP) 1 through two possible nucleation processes, i.e., a classical aggregation or a two-step nucleation pathway. 2 The real nucleation process of CaP in biological conditions becomes much more complicated, attracting extensive interest both experimentally and theoretically.The first factor in controlling nucleation process of CaP is the pH value, which could affect the occurrence of different phosphate species, such as H3PO4 (called 3H for short), H2PO4 -(2H), HPO4 2-(1H), and PO4 3-(0H), shown in Figure 1a. Thus, properties of CaP precipitation, 3, 4 adsorption of organic acid 5 , phase composition 6 , morphology 7, 8 , zeta potentials [9][10][11][12] , and crystal size of CaP 13 could be varied with different pH values.Secondly, through the modulation of interfacial interaction and kinetic stability, the introduction of many kinds of additives, such as metal ions, acid or basic solutions, amino acids, dopamine, and citrate, could change the nucleation or phase transformation paths and morphologies 8, 14-19 . Starting from the ion pair CaHPO4 in a neutral or basic CaP solution, a Ca-deficient pre-nucleation cluster, Ca(HPO4)3 4-, is formed at the early stage of nucleation process. [20][21][22][23][24] Subsequently, those sm...