Bio-Inspired Synthetic Ivory as a Sustainable Material for Piano Keys

Abstract

Natural ivory is no longer readily or legally available, as it is obtained primarily from elephant tusks, which now enjoy international protection. Ivory, however, is the best material known for piano keys. We present a hydroxylapatite-gelatin biocomposite that is chemically identical to natural ivory but with functional properties optimized to replace it. As this biocomposite is fabricated from abundant materials in an environmentally friendly process and is furthermore biodegradable, it is a sustainable solution for piano keys with the ideal functional properties of natural ivory.

Capital y educación musical: Análisis desde la controversia

“…Esto ha permitido controlar ecosistemas, lo que propicia la obtención de recursos para construir herramientas y tecnologías, como los instrumentos musicales (Morley, 2013). Es decir, el ser humano capitalizó culturalmente el medio ambiente, estableciendo relaciones de poder con la naturaleza misma, pues otras especies vegetales y animales comenzaron a subordinarse dada la necesidad cultural y humana de practicar y vivir la música (Fischer et al, 2019;Lafontant, 2019).…”

Calcium Orthophosphate (CaPO4) Containing Composites for Biomedical Applications: Formulations, Properties, and Applications

“…Non-biomedical applications of CaPO 4 -based composites and hybrid formulations are also known, and their amount rapidly increases [460,461,[834][835][836]874,980,1089,1090,[1271][1272][1273][1274][1275][1276][1277][1278][1279][1280][1281][1282][1283][1284][1285]. For example, battery devices employ DCPD/polymer composites as proton conductors [460,461], an HA-contained porous gel polymer electrolyte was developed for a quasi-solid-state sodium ion battery [1280], and HA/carbon nanotube was found to be an anode modifying material [1284], while CuO/HA composites appeared to be excellent dielectric materials [1283].…”

“…Furthermore, PEG/HA composites appeared to be a suitable phase change material, which was useful for thermal energy storage [1275], while a full-daytime subambient cooling TCP/acrylic paint was found to be effective for energy saving [1281]. In addition, CaPO 4 /chitosan composites could be used as a plant growth promoter [1282], while HA/gelatin ones appeared to resemble a synthetic ivory suitable to produce piano keys [1279]. Finally, there are different fields of application for bone char, starting from environmental remediation to sustainable agriculture and catalysis [1089,1090].…”