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Updated: Jul 13, 2026

Calcium Carbonate Formation in the Presence of Biopolymeric Additives
Published on: May 14, 2019
Architecture of columnar nacre, and implications for its formation mechanism
Rebecca A Metzler1, Mike Abrecht, Ronke M Olabisi
1Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
Abstract:
We analyze the structure of Haliotis rufescens nacre, or mother-of-pearl, using synchrotron spectromicroscopy and x-ray absorption near-edge structure spectroscopy. We observe imaging contrast between adjacent individual nacre tablets, arising because different tablets have different crystal orientations with respect to the radiation's polarization vector. Comparing previous data and our new data with models for columnar nacre growth, we find the data are most consistent with a model in which nacre tablets are nucleated by randomly distributed sites in the organic matrix layers.
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