The Biological and Bioinspired Materials group headed by Henrik Birkedal will focus on multiscale and multimodal 2D and 3D imaging to unravel narwhal tusk structure. In particular, this makes used of X-ray fluorescence to map the distribution of chemical elements in the tusk, which are hypothesized to be related to seasonal growth patterns, and X-ray diffraction to determine the crystallographic properties, crystallite orientation and crystallite size of the nanocrystals in the tusk. Finally the group used tomography across length scales from the mm to the nm to map tusk structure in 3D with the aim of unravelling tusk formation in particular how the fascinating spiral structure of the tusk forms.

A postdoc, Adrian Rodriguez Palomo, and a PhD student, Peter A. S. Vibe, are directly involved in the project.