Zengqian Liu, Zhaoyong Weng, Zhao-Feng Zhai, Nan Huang, Zhen-Jun Zhang, Jun Tan, Chuanbin Jiang, Da Jiao, Guoqi Tan, Jian Zhang, Xin Jiang, Zhefeng Zhang, Robert O Ritchie
The tooth enamel of vertebrates comprises a hyper-mineralized bioceramic, but is distinguished by an exceptional durability to resist impact and wear throughout the lifetime of organisms; however, enamels exhibit a low resistance to the initiation of large-scale cracks comparable to that of geological minerals based on fracture mechanics. Here we reveal that the tooth enamel, specifically from the giant panda, is capable of developing durability through counteracting the early stage of damage by partially recovering its innate geometry and structure at nano- to micro- length-scales autonomously...
September 28, 2018: Acta Biomaterialia