“Biomineralization processes are archetypes of synthetic strategies for the construction of organized materials across a range of length scales.”
Stephen Mann

The most complex hierarchy organized chemical structures (e.g., from the nanoworld of proteins to the macroscopic structures of oyster shells, bone and enamel, among others) can be found in Nature. This is why Nature imitation for materials preparation has called the attention of numerous research groups during the last years and is being an emerging field at the interface between bioinorganic chemistry and materials chemistry known as biomimetic materials chemistry.

The understanding of the processes through which inorganic atoms and organic macromolecules self-assemble into organized architectures and complex forms must allow for the design of new bioinspired routes for materials preparation.

Thus, the main research interest of our group is to understand how concepts in biomineralization can be translated into new methods and strategies for synthesis and preparation of materials with tailored structures (at both the micro and the nano domain level). In particular, the bioinspired approaches used by our group are mostly based on spatial confinement, supramolecular templates and interfacial molecular recognition.

The hierarchical organization of the resulting materials will provide different properties and hence, the capability to develop novel applications.