**1. Introduction: The biomimetic concept in biomaterials science**

Biomimicry in biomaterials science means examining nature, its models, systems, processes, and elements to emulate or take inspiration from in order to solve human problems. The scientific community has now realized that in spite of recent advances, many societal needs are still unmet. Biologically inspired approaches have been particularly attractive in several fields, in over 3.8 billion years of evolution.

Several solutions were introduced with increased functionality reducing energy and materials and with no impact on environment, exactly the targets faced by the actual technological challenges [1, 2]. Biomimicry has engaged several fields creating smart materials to solve those problems that nature has already solved. In that past 50 years, some examples of biologically inspired materials were developed. In particular, exploiting bioinspired technologies bone-like materials based on wood and tough ceramics based on mother-of-pearl were designed. Despite biomedical field, other kinds of materials were created such as self-cleaning structures based on flowers, underwater glues based on mussel adhesive, drag reduction based on dermal riblet on shark skin, flight mechanisms based on insect flight, etc. [3–6]. The most recent researches increasingly take inspiration from the nature trying to mimic complex behavior typical of natural structures; in particular, new synthesis methods enabling controlled crystal growth and organized structures at the multi-scale levels are paying close attention. In this way nature is studied not only to develop biomimetic material but also to mimic natural process to create new materials. A highly mimicked natural process is biomineralization useful to create biocompatible materials very close to natural tissue. Biomineralization is a natural process by which organisms form minerals and consists in a complex cascade of phenomena generating hybrid nanostructured materials hierarchically organized from the nanoscale to the macroscopic scale. This process is at the basis of load-bearing structures such as bones, shells, and exoskeletons and allows designing biocomposite with unique properties, not obtainable with any conventional approach, as the information's exchange with cells and the trigger of the bone regenerative cascade [7, 8].
