The structural role and coordination environment of cobalt in 45PO-CaO-NaO phosphate glasses: thermal properties and Raman, UV-vis-NIR, and EPR spectroscopy.

Cobalt-containing materials are of interest for a wide range of applications, from biomaterials to solid-state lasers in optics. For instance, Co is known to trigger the formation of new blood vessels, angiogenesis. Here, the use of phosphate glasses as a vehicle for local release of Co ions is an attractive strategy to overcome the vascularisation limitation in tissue engineering.

Unravelling the dissolution mechanism of polyphosphate glasses by P NMR spectroscopy: ligand competition and reactivity of intermediate complexes.

Phosphate glass dissolution can be tailored via compositional and subsequent structural changes, which is of interest for biomedical applications such as therapeutic ion delivery. Here, solid-state P nuclear magnetic resonance characterisation of 45PO-xCaO - (55 -x)NaO glasses was correlated with dissolution studies using time-dependent liquid P NMR spectroscopy and quantitative chemical analysis. Glasses dissolved congruently in aqueous media, and the first dissolution stage was the hydration of phosphate chains.