Issue 26, 2015

Disordered amorphous calcium carbonate from direct precipitation

Abstract

Amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) is known to play a prominent role in biomineralization. Different studies on the structure of biogenic ACCs have illustrated that they can have distinct short-range orders. However, the origin of so-called proto-structures in synthetic and additive-free ACCs is not well understood. In the current work, ACC has been synthesised in iso-propanolic media by direct precipitation from ionic precursors, and analysed utilising a range of different techniques. The data suggest that this additive-free type of ACC does not resemble clear proto-structural motifs relating to any crystalline polymorph. This can be explained by the undefined pH value in iso-propanolic media, and the virtually instantaneous precipitation. Altogether, this work suggests that aqueous systems and pathways involving pre-nucleation clusters are required for the generation of clear proto-structural features in ACC. Experiments on the ACC-to-crystalline transformation in solution with and without ethanol highlight that polymorph selection is under kinetic control, while the presence of ethanol can control dissolution re-crystallisation pathways.

Graphical abstract: Disordered amorphous calcium carbonate from direct precipitation

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
13 Apr 2015
Accepted
28 May 2015
First published
01 Jun 2015
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

CrystEngComm, 2015,17, 4842-4849

Author version available

Disordered amorphous calcium carbonate from direct precipitation

M. Farhadi Khouzani, D. M. Chevrier, P. Güttlein, K. Hauser, P. Zhang, N. Hedin and D. Gebauer, CrystEngComm, 2015, 17, 4842 DOI: 10.1039/C5CE00720H

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