Amorphous intergranular phases in mature natural tooth enamel are found to provide better adhesion and could dramatically affect their mechanical performance as a structure reinforcing phase. This study successfully synthesized an amorphous intergranular phase enhanced fluorapatite array controlled by Mg2+ (FAP-M) at room temperature. Furthermore, atom probe tomography (APT) observation presents that Mg2+ is enriched at grain boundaries during the assembly of enamel-like fluorapatite arrays, leading to the formation of intergranular phases of Mg-rich amorphous calcium phosphate (Mg-ACP). APT results also demonstrated that the segregation of Mg2+ caused the chemical gradient in nanocrystalline attachment and realignment under the drive of inherent surface stress. These results indicate that the amorphous intergranular phases served like glue to connect each nanorod to reinforce the enamel-like arrays. Therefore, the as-received FAP-M artificial enamel exhibits excellent mechanical properties, with hardness and Young's modulus of 2.90 ± 0.13 GPa and 67.9 ± 3.4 GPa, which were ∼8.3 and 2.2 times higher than those of FAP arrays without controlled by Mg2+, respectively.
Keywords: amorphous intergranular phases; biomineralization; enamel-like structures; magnesium ion regulation; mechanically reinforced arrays.