Implementation of tighter environmental restrictions on combustion engine emissions has
resulted in the need to create new, more environment friendly engine oil additives. By far the …

Numerous living organisms form minerals. These biogenic minerals, or biominerals, are
composite materials containing an organic matrix and nano-or micro-scale amorphous or …

Enamel, the hardest tissue in the body, begins as a three-dimensional network of nanometer
size mineral particles, suspended in a protein gel. This mineral network serves as a template …

Crystalline biominerals do not resemble faceted crystals. Current explanations for this
property involve formation via amorphous phases. Using X-ray absorption near-edge …

Sea urchin larval spicules transform amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) into calcite single
crystals. The mechanism of transformation is enigmatic: the transforming spicule displays …

Nacre, or mother-of-pearl, the iridescent inner layer of many mollusk shells, is a biomineral
lamellar composite of aragonite (CaCO3) and organic sheets. Biomineralization frequently …

Biominerals are organic–mineral composites formed by living organisms. They are the
hardest and toughest tissues in those organisms, are often polycrystalline, and their …

ABSTRACT A novel, anaerobically grown microbial biofilm, scraped from the inner surface
of a borehole, 1474 m below land surface within a South African, Witwatersrand gold mine …

The sea urchin tooth is a remarkable grinding tool. Even though the tooth is composed
almost entirely of calcite, it is used to grind holes into a rocky substrate itself often composed …

Synchrotron-based photoemission electron microscopy (XPEEM) is one of the most powerful
spectro-microscopic techniques for the investigation of surfaces, interfaces, thin films and …