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An Amorphous to Crystalline Transition in the Formation of CaCO3 Thin Films

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2020

Guofeng Xu
Affiliation:
Departments of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ08544 Princeton Materials Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ08544
Nan Yao
Affiliation:
Princeton Materials Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ08544
Ilhan A. Aksay
Affiliation:
Chemical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ08544 Princeton Materials Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ08544
John T. Groves
Affiliation:
Departments of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ08544 Chemical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ08544 Princeton Materials Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ08544
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Extract

Calcium carbonate is one of the most abundant biominerals. Organisms have developed sophisticated controls over its polymorph, morphology and orientation through protein matrices. However, there are many unknowns as to how the matrices affect the crystallization process, in particular, the initial nucleation. A prevailing view is that crystals form via epitaxy from the templates. Alternatively, a crystalline phase could form through a multistep phase transformation, initiated by the formation of an amorphous phase. Since the amorphous phase is more soluble than the stable crystalline phase, it should be the first solid phase formed during the crystallization and therefore could be prevalent in biomineralization. In fact, amorphous phase minerals have been identified in many organisms and more recent discoveries have suggested that amorphous calcium carbonate is more widespread than commonly supposed in biology, but has been overlooked due to the difficulty of identifying an amorphous phase in the presence of a crystalline phase of the same composition.

Type
Surfaces and Interfaces
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America

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References

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