Abstract
Octacalcium phosphate is regarded as a precursor of biological hydroxyapatite (HA) which is a main inorganic constituent of human bones and teeth. It is important to reveal the transformation mechanism of OCP to HA for revealing the mechanism of bone formation and for development of biomedical materials for bone. In this study, OCP particles were immersed in purified water. Those particles were characterized in detail and the transformation model of OCP to HA was proposed. The transformation of OCP to HA was presumed as topotactic transformation. The particles would probably be split by lattice strain and compositional fluctuation.
