Biomimetics

Every Year, students of the Elite Master’s Programme Advanced Materials and Processes (MAP) select two of their lecturers for the Best Lecturer Award. This year, the students opted for Stephan since “he also showed us how things that we take for granted can be deeply intriguing. The last time I ...

Calcite is the most stable mineral form of calcium carbonate encountered everywhere from ocean corral and oyster shells to hard water scale deposits in place such as pipes, showers, and dishwashers. When calcite precipitates from solutions of calcium carbonate the process begins with amorphous precu...

Biominerals – shells, teeth, or even bones – are ceramics generated by organisms whose function and resilience have been evolutionarily optimized over millions of years. In contrast to conventional, synthetic ceramics, these biological ceramics often exhibit very complex and well-controlled crystall...

An international research team with Prof. S. E. Wolf from Friedrich-Alexander-University and Dr. R. Hovden, Prof. Muller and Prof. L. Estroff from Cornell University demonstrated for the first time that nacre, in the species of the Noble Fan Shell Pinna nobilis, forms by a particle-driven crystall...

Recent Research, lead by Prof. SE Wolf and Dr. J. Harris revealed that crystal lattice tilting, which hardens calcarous mollusk shells, can by generated in vitro by a pseudomorphic phase transformation of a thin, amorphous film of calcium carbonate generated at the air/water-interface. Under pro...