Seminar series sponsored by Materials Science & Engineering Department.

Abstract: Crystallization done by living organisms, termed biomineralization, involves biological control over crystal nucleation, growth, and crystal orientation patterns in the final biomineral. Marine biomineralization mechanisms are only beginning to be understood, are often surprising, and important to understand the evolution of biomineralizers and their interactions with their environments.
In this seminar I will describe one mechanism of crystallization by attachment of amorphous particles to fresh, forming coral skeletons, and their subsequent crystallization into aragonite crystals. Unprecedented crystal orientation patterns as the one displayed here, analyzed and displayed using Polarization-dependent Imaging Contrast (PIC) mapping, reveal that the crystals are spherulitic, that is, elongated, and radiating from centers or lines. Spherulites fill 3D space at greater speed than any other crystal growth mode, thus this is Nature’s 3D-printing.