Ductile particle toughening of hydroxyapatite ceramics using platinum particles

Bioceramics such as hydroxyapatites have low fracture toughness and this has limited their widespread use in medicine. In this paper we describe a method for incorporating, ductile platinum particles into a hydroxyapatite matrix in order to improve the fracture toughness. The fracture toughness of the composite was measured using a Vickers indentation technique and the effect of volume fraction of platinum particles on the fracture toughness was determined and compared with predictions based on models in the literature. The results indicated that the incorporation of the particles improved the measured fracture toughness of the composite in a manner consistent with that predicted in the literature.