The hidden structure of human enamel.

Clicks: 663
ID: 53374
2019
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Steady

Ranked #4 of 485 articles by views in Nature communications

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 485 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
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.
Reference Key
beniash2019thenature Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Beniash, Elia;Stifler, Cayla A;Sun, Chang-Yu;Jung, Gang Seob;Qin, Zhao;Buehler, Markus J;Gilbert, Pupa U P A;
Journal Nature communications
Year 2019
DOI
10.1038/s41467-019-12185-7
URL
Keywords
deformation crack resistance glasses indentation micro‐ductility

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.