Dr. Tilman Grünewald, CNRS - Institut Fresnel, Marseille, France

Structure from disorder – Understanding mineralization and its pathways by multimodal imaging

The structural organization of oyster shells offers an excellent model system to study the emergence of nanostructures from disordered amorphous precursor phases, most notably amorphous calcium carbonate and proteins.

This talk aims at introducing methods to study structural organization on various length scales like X-ray scattering tensor tomography, Bragg ptychography and total scattering, discussing their respective merits in the study of biomineralization processes and assemble a coherent image of the mineralization process in pearl oysters as well as in synthetic CaCO₃ systems.

In the following the benefits and challenges of multi-modal imaging will be briefly discussed before potential future developments in the light of the emerging next generation synchrotron sources like e.g. ESRF-EBS or Max IV will be explored.

Host: Associate Professor Henrik Birkedal, iNANO & Dept. of Chemistry, AU