Lower hardness than strength: the auxetic composite microstructure of limpet tooth

The limpet tooth is widely recognized as nature's strongest material, with reported strength values up to 6.5 GPa. Recently, microscale auxeticity has been discovered in the leading part of the tooth, providing a possible explanation for this extreme strength. Utilizing micromechanical experiments, we find hardness values in nanoindentation that are lower than the respective strength observed in micropillar compression tests. Using micromechanical modeling, we show that this unique behavior is a result of local tensile strains during indentation, originating from the microscale auxeticity. As the limpet tooth lacks ductility, these tensile strains lead to microdamage in the auxetic regions of the microstructure. Consequently, indentation with a sharp indenter always probes a damaged version of the material, explaining the lower hardness and modulus values gained from nanoindentation. Micropillar tests were found to be mostly insensitive to such microdamage due to the lower applied strain and are therefore the suggested method for characterizing auxetic nanocomposites.