Engineering

Oxide

Biomedical engineering

Metallurgy

Materials science

Graphene

Biocompatible material

Ultimate tensile strength

Apatite

Chemical engineering

Nanotechnology

Fracture toughness

Composite material

Bioceramic

Medicine

Nanoscopic scale

Toughness

Bioactive Materials

Hydroxyapatite (HA) is an attractive bioceramic for hard tissue repair and regeneration due to its physicochemical similarities to natural apatite. However, its low fracture toughness, poor tensile strength and weak wear resistance become major obstacles for potential clinical applications. One promising method to tackle with these problems is exploiting graphene and its derivatives (graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide) as nanoscale reinforcement fillers to fabricate graphene-based hydroxyapatite composites in the form of powders, coatings and scaffolds. The last few years witnessed increasing numbers of studies on the preparation, mechanical and biological evaluations of these novel materials. Herein, various preparation techniques, mechanical behaviors and toughen mechanism, the in vitro/in vivo biocompatible analysis, antibacterial properties of the graphene-based HA composites are presented in this review.

An overview of graphene-based hydroxyapatite composites for orthopedic applications