Bioinspired Ceramic Thin Film Processing: Present Status and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Nature has ingeniously succeeded in producing an impressive variety of inorganic functional structures with a designed shape and size on specific sites through a biologically controlled biomineralization process, usually at near room temperature and in aqueous solutions. The most important principle understood from biomineralization processes is that nucleation and growth of the biomineral phase are almost always carefully and exquisitely controlled by complex organic matrix biopolymerspreorganized supramolecular templates, which are associated to regulate a single, precise step in either the nucleation or the growth portion of the production of the mineral phase. The interaction at a molecular-level solid−liquid interface between a specific surface chemistry and a solution supersaturated with respect to the inorganic material is one key feature of natural biomineralization. The study of biomineralization offers valuable insights into the scope and nature of materials chemistry at the inorganic−organic in...