2021/08/17 by Andrew J. Lew, Lew, Andrew J., Cayla A. Stifler +7
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #Calcium Carbonate Crystallization and Inhibition #FOS: Physical sciences #Geological and Geochemical Analysis #Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils #physics.bio-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2108.07877
18 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 2021/08/17 · openalex publication_date 2021/08/17 · arxiv updated 2021/08/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The hardest materials in living organisms are biologically grown crystalline minerals, or biominerals, which are also incredibly fracture-tough. Biomineral mesostructure includes size, shape, spatial arrangement, and crystal orientation of crystallites, observable at the mesoscale (10 nanometer - 10 micron). Here we show that diverse biominerals, including nacre and prisms from mollusk shells, coral skeletons, and tunicate spicules have different mesostructures, but they converged to similar, small (<30 degrees) misorientations of adjacent crystals at the mesoscale. We show that such small misorientations are an effective toughening mechanism. Combining Polarization-dependent Imaging Contrast (PIC) mapping of mesostructures and Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations of misoriented bicrystals, we reveal here that small misorientations toughen bicrystals, thus explaining why they evolved independently but convergently: preventing fracture is a clear evolutionary advantage for diverse organisms.