Advanced Biomaterials for Hard Tissue Repair and Regeneration

Book excerpt: Teeth and bones are typical hard tissues in vertebrates. Due to hierarchical structural characteristics and excellent mechanical properties, hard tissues play important roles in the human body, such as health protection, movement support, and food mastication. Once hard tissue defect occurs, our living quality will be seriously affected. In general, hard tissues lack the ability to self-repair, except for the regeneration ability of bone for small-scale defects. As a result, the past few decades have witnessed great progress in the field of biomaterials for hard tissue repair. Actually, both teeth and bone are masterpieces of biomineralization in nature, the repair and regeneration of hard tissues should be performed in a biomimetic way, either by using a biomimetic mineralization strategy or biomimetic materials.