Sea science builds stronger bones

Scientists from the US Department of Energy’s

(Berkeley Lab) are looking deep into the ocean for ways of building stronger artificial bones.

The team of Materials Sciences researchers, Antoni Tomsia Sylvain Deville, Eduardo Saiz, and Ravi Nalla, have been working for years on creating a composite so similar to bone it will not trigger immune reactions and can change to meet the body’s requirements. They were already investigating a composite similar in structure to nacre, a finely layered substance found in some mollusc shells. However, replicating the complex natural architecture of varying length scales proved difficult using a synthetic substance.

The group turned back to the sea for their solution. Seawater can freeze like a layered material forming crystals of pure ice layers, while impurities such as salt and microorganisms are expelled from the forming ice and entrapped in channels between the ice crystals. The result is a layered structure that roughly resembles nacre’s wafer-like construction.