Effect of High Temperature on Morphology and Structure of a New Composite as Raw Material of Filament for Fused Deposition Modeling Processes

Hydroxyapatite and collagen are mainly inorganic and organic components of human natural bone. Nanocrystal hydroxyapatite/collagen (nHAC) composite has good biological properties, and polylactide (PLA) is a biodegradable polymer material. Both can be well applied to organism and play a critical role in bone tissue engineering materials. In this paper, a new nano-hydroxyapatite/collagen/PLA composite with the thought of bionics as raw material of filament for fused deposition modeling (FDM) processes was developed in order to observe the thermal structure properties of the new filaments. The structure and components of the samples were investigated by energy dispersive spectrograph (EDS), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electronic Microscopy (SEM) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR). The results of FTIR and XRD showed that the nHAC/PLA changed greatly at 220 and 240 °C compared with the room temperature. And SEM and EDS showed that nHAC/PLA had a complete microstructure and components at 200 °C.