Scientists discover how mother-of-pearl self-assembles into a perfect structure

In a new study published in Nature Physics, researchers from the B CUBE—Center for Molecular Bioengineering at TU Dresden and European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble describe, for the first time, that structural defects in self-assembling nacre attract and cancel each other out, eventually leading to a perfect periodic structure.