Anomalous water and ion dynamics in hydroxyapatite mesopores

Abstract

Hydroxyapatite (HAP) is the principal phase of bones, where the presence of ions in the fluids within HAP pores is critical to important phenomena such as bone remodeling, mineralization and fossilization. Classical molecular dynamics simulations of HAP pores ranging from 2 to 120 nm, containing pure water and aqueous solutions of CaCl2 and of CaF2, were conducted to quantify the effect of confinement and solution composition on the dynamic properties of water and ions. Diffusion coefficients were obtained from formulations adapted to diffusion processes parallel and perpendicular to the HAP walls. A change in diffusion mechanism is observed in the direction perpendicular to the HAP walls: after a transition period proportional to the pore size, the mean squared displacement scales with the square-root of the time instead of being linear. The presence of CaCl2 and CaF2 decelerates water and ion dynamics, and changes in ion concentration modify the in-plane dynamics more strongly than the out-plane dynamics of ions in HAP pores.