California Sea Grant College Program

To help meet the needs for a new generation of advanced, high-performance composites required for new construction materials, new micro-electronic, optoelectronic and catalytic devices, chemical and biological sensors (Bright, 1994), energy transducers, "smart" medical implants (Newnham, 1997) and faster and higher capacity “biochips” (Kozal et al., 1996; Travis, 1997), materials scientists have turned to the biomimetic production of mineralized nanocomposites modeled on those produced by marine organisms (Eisner, 1991; Mann et al., 1992, 1993; Heuer et al., 1992; Pennisi, 1992; Mann, 1993; Walsh et al, 1994; Hoch et al., 1996; Mann and Ozin, 1996; Yang et al., 1997). These ceramic-like composites of mineral and biopolymers offer unique combinations of strength, anisotropy, biocompatibility, precise structural control at the nanoscale level, and coupling between mineral and organic polymeric phases that make them especially attractive models for commercially valuable new materials (e.g., Bouchon et al., 1995; Hoch et al., 1996).