The structural motifs of mineralized hard tissues from nano- to mesoscale: A future perspective for material science

Biological tissues have developed structures that fulfil their various specific requirements. Mineralized tissues, such as tooth and bone, are often of mechanical competence for load bearing. Tooth enamel is the hardest and toughest mineralized tissue. Despite a few millimeters thick and with minimal regenerative capacity, human tooth enamel maintains its functions throughout a lifetime. Bone provides skeletal support and essential metabolism to our body. Degenerative diseases and ageing induce the loss of mechanical integrity of the bone, increasing the susceptibility to fractures. Tooth and bone share certain commonalities in chemical components and material characteristics, both consisting of nanocrystalline apatite and matrix proteins as their basic foundational structural units. Although the mechanical properties of such mineralized hard tissues remain unclear, it is plausible that they have an inherent toughening mechanism. Nanoindentation is able to characterize the mechanical properties of tooth enamel and bone at multiscale levels, and the results suggest that such toughening mechanisms of enamel and bone may be mainly associated with the smallest-scale structure-function relationships. These findings will benefit the development of advanced biomaterials in the field of material science and will further our understanding of degenerative bone disease in the clinical community.