The hidden structure of human enamel
Name
s41467-019-12185-7.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
3.88 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
50a1af855a0d1791a457bf34cc3fe1d0
Author(s)
Jung, Gang Seob
Qin, Zhao
Buehler, Markus J.
Date Issued
September 26, 2019
Journal
Nature communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Beniash, Elia et al. "The hidden structure of human enamel." Nature communications 10 (2019): 1038 © 2019 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Enamel is the hardest and most resilient tissue in the human body. Enamel includes morphologically aligned, parallel, ∼50 nm wide, microns-long nanocrystals, bundled either into 5-μm-wide rods or their space-filling interrod. The orientation of enamel crystals, however, is poorly understood. Here we show that the crystalline c-axes are homogenously oriented in interrod crystals across most of the enamel layer thickness. Within each rod crystals are not co-oriented with one another or with the long axis of the rod, as previously assumed: the c-axes of adjacent nanocrystals are most frequently mis-oriented by 1°–30°, and this orientation within each rod gradually changes, with an overall angle spread that is never zero, but varies between 30°–90° within one rod. Molecular dynamics simulations demonstrate that the observed mis-orientations of adjacent crystals induce crack deflection. This toughening mechanism contributes to the unique resilience of enamel, which lasts a lifetime under extreme physical and chemical challenges.
Subjects
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
General Physics and Astronomy
General Chemistry
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12185-7
