title: Principles of mimicking and engineering the self-organized structure of hard tissues.
abstract: The mechanism of the formation of a self-aligned hydroxyapatite (HAP) nanocrystallite structure was examined. It is found that the highly ordered HAP nanocrystallite assembly is attributed to the so-called self-(homo)epitaxial nucleation and growth. On the other hand, according to this mechanism, a high supersaturation will give rise to a random assembly of HAP crystallites. The effects of ions, biosubstrate, and supersaturation on the micro/nanostructure correlation between substrate and biominerals as well as their implications in hard tissue formation were examined. Surprisingly, some biomolecules are found to be able to suppress the supersaturation-driven interfacial structure mismatch and hence promote the well aligned HAP pattern formation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, 2 Science Drive 3, Singapore 117542, Singapore.
authors.forename: Huaidong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Xiang-Yang
authors.initials: XY
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D002113:Calcification, Physiologic; D003460:Crystallization; D017886:Durapatite / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D017886:Durapatite