Preliminary Experiments of In Situ Atomic Force Microscopy Observation of Hydroxyapatite Formation on Bioactive Glass Surface

This paper demonstrates the use of atomic force microscopy (AFM) to image the bioactivity of phosphate glasses that are well-known to react rapidly in simulated body fluid. The present study demonstrates that the hydroxyapatite (HAP) crystalline layer found via AFM in the examined samples coincides with that identified using scanning electron microscopy. Moreover, the effect of a notorious bacteriostatic cation - tetravalent cerium, Ce(IV) - on the kinetics of the HAP layer is investigated in CeO 2 -doped bioactive glasses.