Dr. Tilman Grünewald
Beamline ID13, X-ray nanoprobe group (XNP)
ESRF - The European Synchrotron, France

Insights into the Structure and Function of biominerals by novel X-ray techniques

Understanding the processes involved in biomineralization and implant-bone interactions more specifically, attracted significant attention across a variety of communities. Despite huge progress in the last years, our picture is far from complete.

The following talk is presenting some work on the degradation process of biodegradable Mg implants, elucidating how the degradation speed is linked to the surprising response of the bone matrix. Furthermore, recent results from SAXS tensor tomography show how the implant degradation governs the bone growth and the orientation of the nanostructure in 3D.

As the crystallographic texture and its spatial variation is one the most cunning features of biomineralization it is until now unfortunately also one of the hardest to access experimentally. The novel technique of energy-dispersive Laue diffraction presents a new way determining the crystallographic texture in 3D in a one-shot manner, allowing for unprecedented speed and spatial resolution of data acquisition. Some recent results will be shown, underpinning the potential of this method. 

Host: Associate professor Henrik Birkedal, iNANO & Dept. of Chemistry, Aarhus University