Xu, Y orcid.org/0000-0001-5180-8892, Tijssen, KCH, Bomans, PHH et al. (4 more authors) (2018) Microscopic structure of the polymer-induced liquid precursor for calcium carbonate. Nature Communications, 9 (1).
Abstract
Many biomineral crystals form complex non-equilibrium shapes, often via transient amorphous precursors. Also in vitro crystals can be grown with non-equilibrium morphologies, such as thin films or nanorods. In many cases this involves charged polymeric additives that form a polymer-induced liquid precursor (PILP). Here, we investigate the CaCO3 based PILP process with a variety of techniques including cryoTEM and NMR. The initial products are 30–50 nm amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) nanoparticles with ~2 nm nanoparticulate texture. We show the polymers strongly interact with ACC in the early stages, and become excluded during crystallization, with no liquid–liquid phase separation detected during the process. Our results suggest that “PILP” is actually a polymer-driven assembly of ACC clusters, and that its liquid-like behavior at the macroscopic level is due to the small size and surface properties of the assemblies. We propose that a similar biopolymer-stabilized nanogranular phase may be active in biomineralization.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2018 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Chemistry (Leeds) > Inorganic Chemistry (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 25 Oct 2018 09:31 |
Last Modified: | 02 Nov 2018 15:31 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Research |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-018-05006-w |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:137692 |