The heterogeneity inside the sample is immediately apparent. All the measured crystals possess a mosaic structure, with sub-crystalline domains. There is a large distribution in size, shape, and internal morphology. Some particles are clearly part of fused, polycrystalline aggregates (3 and 8), but which share similar crystallographic orientation (Fig. . Each crystal has a unique internal strain gradient, ranging from particles 1 and 6 with complex internal nanostructure, to relatively featureless (2 and 7). Interestingly, particle 1 is the only crystal with an internal striped morphology. The orientation maps are similarly heterogeneous. The total curvature and the size of the crystallites are positively correlated (Fig. ). Linear fitting of the ensemble of particles indicates that the crystals exhibit an average radius of curvature of 269 ± 52 um. Because crystallographic bending may reflect the presence of several types of defects which are difficult to distinguish, we propose the radius of curvature as a structural descriptor reflecting the quality of layered active materials. Less defective crystals by definition must exhibit less crystallographic curvature, independent of doping, transition metal stoichiometry, or mechanically induced distortion. Ongoing efforts to predict durability ab initio will need to account for these substantial deviations from the theoretical, unstrained, uncurved structure in order to accurately anticipate failure modes of micrometer sized crystals. The magnitude of this curvature is resolvable using modern electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), which is becoming more broadly available. We anticipate that EBSD may be more convenient than SXDM for many researchers, considering recent improvements in speed and sensitivity, typically achieving 50 nm lateral resolution. However, EBSD can only measure the distortion within 20 nm of the surface, while SXDM images probe the thickness of the entire crystal. This depth summing effect renders the SXDM maps more representative of the total crystal microstructure, at the cost of losing near-surface vs bulk information.