Approximately thousand years ago it was reported the use of mandibles of ants for suture. In this sense, bioinspired components, as absorbable surgical clamps, can be designed. This study is aimed to characterize the mandible of the ant Atta laevigata in order to help the selection of candidate biomaterials for application as surgical clamps. Three pairs of mandibles were used and ten nanoindenations were performed in each pair. The average hardness for the samples in the internal and external regions were 0.36 ± 0.06 GPa and 0.19 ± 0.04 GPa, respectively and the average elastic modulus for the internal and external regions were 6.16 ± 0.23 GPa and 2.74 ± 0.44 GPa, respectively. The morphology of the mandible was observed in detail by scanning electron microscopy, as well as Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The average roughnesses on the internal and external regions, measured by atomic force microscopy, were 6.73 ± 0.90 nm and 11.87 ± 1.42 nm, respectively. From these results, it was possible to identify biomaterials that mimic the mandible behaviour for surgical clamp.

In this work two very simple apparatuses, namely the ball crater (or ball-on-plate) and the linear reciprocating (or pin-on-plate) tests, were used in order to investigate the wear mechanisms of TPH Spectrum® and Resilab Master® dental composite resins. Loads in the range of 100 g to 1 kg and a total number of up to 24000 cycles were employed. During some of these tests, aqueous aluminum oxide suspensions were used as abrasive agent either diluted or not in distilled water. In case of the ball-on-plate test wear is dominated by abrasive and/or adhesive mechanisms, and is characterized by scratches which are composed of wear defects comprising particle detachment, wear of the polymer matrix and ceramic particle abrasion. However, the relative contributions of the two wear mechanisms could not be determined separately. In case of the pin-on-plate test wear is governed by the fatigue mechanism, although abrasive and adhesive wear mechanism are also present. After a certain number of cycles fatigue wear dominates the wear behavior and results in severe material loss. This mechanism seems to be more important in case of more brittle materials and when higher loads are employed. Qualitative analysis of the results suggests that the combination of these two very simple methods under appropriate conditions can yield sound results which may be representative of a number of clinical situations.