Biomineralization and Biomimetic Materials Processing

This chapter discusses the mechanisms of typical biomineralization in different living systems, and examines the biomimetic synthesis of inorganic materials. It focuses on material formation mechanisms and bioinspired process principles with the use of protein/peptide molecules that are extracted from the organisms or identified through the molecular evolution process, showing specific affinity to an arbitrary inorganic material. Surface-directed biomineralization is a process in which certain crystal surfaces directly grow from the protein surfaces. In organic matrix-templated biomineralization, a macromolecule matrix is usually formed as a preform of the minerals. There are several stages in the biomineralization of bone, including vesicle mineralization, subsequent collagen mineralization, and secondary mineralization. An interesting protein-templated biomineralization is the basins of mollusks, the nacreous part. A protein that is widely used as a protein template for synthesizing metal nanoparticles is bovine serum albumin, the most abundant protein in the circulatory system. Biomolecule-mediated synthesis approach uses the proteins identified from living organisms.