The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Skeleton of Euplectella sp.: Structural Hierarchy from the Nanoscale to the Macroscale
Abstract
Structural materials in nature exhibit remarkable designs with building blocks, often hierarchically arranged from the nanometer to the macroscopic length scales. We report on the structural properties of biosilica observed in the hexactinellid sponge Euplectella sp. Consolidated, nanometer-scaled silica spheres are arranged in well-defined microscopic concentric rings glued together by organic matrix to form laminated spicules. The assembly of these spicules into bundles, effected by the laminated silica-based cement, results in the formation of a macroscopic cylindrical square-lattice cagelike structure reinforced by diagonal ridges. The ensuing design overcomes the brittleness of its constituent material, glass, and shows outstanding mechanical rigidity and stability. The mechanical benefits of each of seven identified hierarchical levels and their comparison with common mechanical engineering strategies are discussed.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Liu, Y., Ai, K., & Lu, L. (2014) · Chemical Reviews · doi:10.1021/cr400407a · Cited by 4,794
Biological materials: Structure and mechanical properties
Meyers, M. A., Chen, P.-Y., Lin, A. Y.-M., & Seki, Y. (2008) · Progress in Materials Science · doi:10.1016/j.pmatsci.2007.05.002 · Cited by 2,573
Tough, Bio-Inspired Hybrid Materials
Munch, E., Launey, M. E., Alsem, D. H., Saiz, E., Tomsia, A. P., & Ritchie, R. O. (2008) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1164865 · Cited by 1,822
Gower, L. B. (2008) · Chemical Reviews · doi:10.1021/cr800443h · Cited by 1,086
Liu, Z., Meyers, M. A., Zhang, Z., & Ritchie, R. O. (2017) · Progress in Materials Science · doi:10.1016/j.pmatsci.2017.04.013 · Cited by 895
Metadata
- Authors
- Aizenberg, J., Weaver, J. C., Thanawala, M. S., Sundar, V. C., Morse, D. E., & Fratzl, P.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2005-07-08
- Volume
- 309
- Issue
- 5732
- Pages
- 275-278
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2122171697
- Cited by
- 1,144
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 23.33
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Skeleton of Euplectella sp.: Structural Hierarchy from the Nanoscale to the Macroscale. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1126/science.1112255
- The paper
- Aizenberg, J., Weaver, J. C., Thanawala, M. S., Sundar, V. C., Morse, D. E., & Fratzl, P. (2005). Skeleton of Euplectella sp.: Structural Hierarchy from the Nanoscale to the Macroscale. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1112255
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
