Nature is a difficult place for life to live, as such biology has devised
many interesting materials to cope with its harsh environments. The
materials of nature are often wonderfully complex and intricate,
combining the properties of multiple components to create materials
that can live up to the tasks they are wrought through. Understand-
ing bioinorganic materials can provide both an inspiration for future
synthetic materials and the pathway to improving medical proce-
dures when integration with materials such as bone is necessary.
My research leading to the present dissertation has focused on
three major topics. Development of analytical methods for analyzing
X-ray diffraction data. The bioinorganic material in the stomatopod
dactyl club. The mineralized structural matrix of bone.
X-ray methods are great for analyzing bioinorganic structures,
as they have the penetration power to go through them, and can
be used in multiple different ways to characterize materials. As
part of this thesis methods have been developed to quickly and
effectively integrate diffraction patterns, and analyze the orientation
of crystallites using X-ray diffraction.
The dactyl club of the stomatopod encompasses many different
regions, which hold wildly different structures. The work on the
dactyl club shows previously unseen details in the impact surface,
and that biomineralization occurs earlier than previously thought.
Multiple new structures in the dactyl clubs are presented herein.
Bone studies forming part of this thesis show that there mineral
structure is orientation dependant in a very small volume of bone,
using a 50 nm beamt to examine bone in great detail. Explorations of
the effect of Sr coatings on osseointegration show that Sr is confined
to the immidiate area surrounding the the implant and that it affects
multiple crystallite parameters.