No abstract

We review the different factors affecting significantly mineral structure and composition of bones.Particularly, it is assessed that micro-nano-structural and chemical properties of skeleton bones change drastically during burning; the micro-and nano-structural changes attending those phases manifest themselves, amongst others, in observable alterations to the bones colour, morphology, microstructure, mechanical strength and crystallinity.Intense changes involving the structure and chemical composition of bones also occur during the fossilization process. Bioapatite material is contaminated by an heavy fluorination process which, on a long-time scale reduces sensibly the volume of the original unit cell, mainly the a-axis of the 2 hexagonal P63/m space group. Moreover, the bioapatite suffers to a varying degree of extent by phase contamination from the nearby environment, to the point that rarely a fluorapatite single phase may be found in fossil bones here examined.TEM images supply precise and localized information, on apatite crystal shape and dimension, and on different processes that occur during thermal processes or fossilization of ancient bone.complementary to that given by X-ray Diffraction and Attenuated Total Reflection Infrared spectroscopy. We are presenting a synthesis of XRD, ATR-IR and TEM results on the nanostructure of various modern, burned and palaeontological bones.

No abstract

Spatio-temporal patterns are ubiquitous in different areas of materials science and biological systems. However, typically the motifs in these types of systems present a random distribution with many possible different structures. Herein, we demonstrate that controlled spatio-temporal patterns, with reproducible spiral-like shapes, can be obtained by electrodeposition of Co-In alloys inside a confined circular geometry (i.e., in disks that are commensurate with the typical size of the spatio-temporal features). These patterns are mainly of compositional nature, i.e., with virtually no topographic features. Interestingly, the local changes in composition lead to a periodic modulation of the physical (electric, magnetic and mechanical) properties. Namely, the Co-rich areas show higher saturation magnetization and electrical conductivity and are mechanically harder than the In-rich ones. Thus, this work reveals that confined electrodeposition of this binary system constitutes an effective procedure to attain template-free magnetic, electric and mechanical surface patterning with specific and reproducible shapes.

We review the different factors affecting significantly mineral structure and composition of bones.Particularly, it is assessed that micro-nano-structural and chemical properties of skeleton bones change drastically during burning; the micro-and nano-structural changes attending those phases manifest themselves, amongst others, in observable alterations to the bones colour, morphology, microstructure, mechanical strength and crystallinity.Intense changes involving the structure and chemical composition of bones also occur during the fossilization process. Bioapatite material is contaminated by an heavy fluorination process which, on a long-time scale reduces sensibly the volume of the original unit cell, mainly the a-axis of the 2 hexagonal P63/m space group. Moreover, the bioapatite suffers to a varying degree of extent by phase contamination from the nearby environment, to the point that rarely a fluorapatite single phase may be found in fossil bones here examined.TEM images supply precise and localized information, on apatite crystal shape and dimension, and on different processes that occur during thermal processes or fossilization of ancient bone.complementary to that given by X-ray Diffraction and Attenuated Total Reflection Infrared spectroscopy. We are presenting a synthesis of XRD, ATR-IR and TEM results on the nanostructure of various modern, burned and palaeontological bones.