Kavli Affiliate: Lara A. Estroff
| First 5 Authors: Jiseok Gim, Alden Koch, Laura M. Otter, Benjamin H. Savitzky, Sveinung Erland
| Summary:
A pearl’s distinguished beauty and toughness are attributable to the periodic
stacking of aragonite tablets known as nacre. Nacre has naturally occurring
mesoscale periodicity that remarkably arises in the absence of discrete
translational symmetry. Gleaning the inspiring biomineral design of a pearl
requires quantifying its structural coherence and understanding the stochastic
processes that influence formation. By characterizing the entire structure of
pearls (~3 mm) in cross-section at high resolution, we show nacre has
medium-range mesoscale periodicity. Self-correcting growth mechanisms actively
remedy disorder and topological defects of the tablets and act as a
countervailing process to long-range disorder. Nacre has a correlation length
of roughly 16 tablets (~5.5 um) despite persistent fluctuations and topological
defects. For longer distances (> 25 tablets, ~8.5 um), the frequency spectrum
of nacre tablets follows f^(-1.5) behavior suggesting growth is coupled to
external stochastic processes-a universality found across disparate natural
phenomena which now includes pearls.
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