Mineralized structures in nature: Examples and inspirations for the design of new composite materials and biomaterials

Through the natural evolutionary process, organisms have been improving amazing mineralized materials for a series of functions using a relatively few constituent elements. Biomineralization has been widely studied in the last years. It is important to understand how minerals are produced by organisms and also their structure and the corresponding relationship with the properties and function. Moreover, one can look at minerals as a tool that could be used to develop high performance materials, through design inspiration and to find novel processing routes functioning at mild conditions of temperature, pressure and solvent type. As important as the molecular constituents are structural factors, which include the existence of different levels of organization and controlled orientation. Moreover, the way how the hierarchical levels are linked and interfacial features plays also a major role in the final behavior of the biogenic composite. The main aim of this work is to review the latest contributions that have been reported on composite materials produced in nature, and to relate their structures at different length scales to their main functions and properties. There is also an interest in developing new biomimetic procedures that could induce the production of calcium phosphate coatings, similar to bone apatite in substrates for biomedical applications, namely in orthopedic implants and scaffolds for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine; this topic will be also addressed. Finally, we also review the latest proposed approaches to develop novel synthetic materials and coatings inspired from natural-based nanocomposites.