Homoepitaxial meso- and microscale crystal co-orientation and organic matrix network structure in Mytilus edulis nacre and calcite.

New developments in high-resolution, low accelaration voltage electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) enable us to resolve and quantify the co-orientation of nanocrystals constituting biological carbonate crystals with a scan step resolution of 125 nm. This allows the investigation of internal structures in carbonate tablets and tower biocrystals in the nacre of mollusc shells, and it provides details on the calcite-aragonite polymorph interface in bivalves. Within the aragonite tablets of Mytilus edulis nacre we find a mesoscale crystallographic mosaic structure with a misorientation distribution of 2° full width at half maximum.