Mineralized biological tissues, whose behavior can range from rigid to compliant, are an essential component of vertebrates and invertebrates. While biomineralization has been intensively investigated in recent years, experiments mainly focus on hard biominerals and little is known about how the behavior of mineralized yet compliant tissues can be tuned by the degree of mineralization. This work addresses this issue and compares the viscoelasticity of unmineralized and mineralized hydrogels as a function of composition. Gelation is affected by the ions in solution. It is also shown that post-mineralization, a balance between the stiffening effect of the solid phase and the engulfing of agarose chains by the growing crystal causes the viscoelastic behavior to remain essentially unchanged, thereby implying a self-adaptation of the hydrogel to mineralization. This work not only provides a route to design biologically inspired soft composites, but also helps to understand the change of properties that biomineralization can cause to biological tissues, organisms and biofilms.

Self-adaptive hydrogels

254th National Meeting (2017)

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