Small-misorientation toughness in biominerals evolved convergently

TL;DR

This study reveals that diverse biominerals have evolved a convergent mesostructure feature of small crystal misorientations (<30°) that enhances fracture toughness, explaining their evolutionary advantage.

Contribution

It demonstrates that small crystal misorientations are a convergent toughening mechanism in biominerals, supported by imaging and molecular dynamics simulations.

Findings

Small misorientations (<30°) are common in biominerals.

Small misorientations improve fracture toughness.

Convergent evolution of mesostructure for toughness.

Abstract

The hardest materials in living organisms are biologically grown crystalline minerals, or biominerals, which are also incredibly fracture-tough. Biomineral mesostructure includes size, shape, spatial arrangement, and crystal orientation of crystallites, observable at the mesoscale (10 nanometer - 10 micron). Here we show that diverse biominerals, including nacre and prisms from mollusk shells, coral skeletons, and tunicate spicules have different mesostructures, but they converged to similar, small (<30 degrees) misorientations of adjacent crystals at the mesoscale. We show that such small misorientations are an effective toughening mechanism. Combining Polarization-dependent Imaging Contrast (PIC) mapping of mesostructures and Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations of misoriented bicrystals, we reveal here that small misorientations toughen bicrystals, thus explaining why they evolved independently but convergently: preventing fracture is a clear evolutionary advantage for diverse organisms.