LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Trapping Amorphous Intermediates of Carbonates - A Combined Total Scattering and NMR Study.

Photo from wikipedia

Crystallization via metastable phases plays an important role in chemical manufacturing, biomineralization, and protein crystallization, but the kinetic pathways leading from metastable phases to the stable crystalline modifications are not… Click to show full abstract

Crystallization via metastable phases plays an important role in chemical manufacturing, biomineralization, and protein crystallization, but the kinetic pathways leading from metastable phases to the stable crystalline modifications are not well understood. In particular, the fast crystallization of amorphous intermediates makes a detailed characterization challenging. To circumvent this problem, we devised a system that allows trapping and stabilizing the amorphous intermediates of representative carbonates (calcium, strontium, barium, manganese, and cadmium). The long-term stabilization of these transient species enabled a detailed investigation of their composition, structure, and morphology. Total scattering experiments with high-energy synchrotron radiation revealed a short-range order of several angstroms in all amorphous intermediates. From the synchrotron data, a structural model of amorphous calcium carbonate was derived that indicates a lower coordination number of calcium compared to the crystalline polymorphs. Our study shows that a multistep crystallization pathway via amorphous intermediates is open to many carbonates. We could isolate and characterize these transient species, thereby providing new insights into their crystallization mechanism.

Keywords: total scattering; amorphous intermediates; crystallization; study; trapping amorphous

Journal Title: Journal of the American Chemical Society
Year Published: 2018

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.