Mussel's calcitic shell growth adheres to physical laws familiar from processes used to optimise steel

Mussels are veritable masters of biomineralisation. They make hard, robust composite materials from simple substances in order to build their shells. Furthermore, the shell material itself is produced in an exemplary way. A Franco-German team working with scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam studied the giant Mediterranean fan mussel Pinna nobilis and was able to acquire a better understanding of crystallite growth. The scientists found that the calcite cr...