Polymorph Discrimination of CaCO3 Mineral in an Ethanol/Water Solution:  Formation of Complex Vaterite Superstructures and Aragonite Rods

Shao-Feng Chen,†§ Shu-Hong Yu,*†‡§ Jun Jiang,†‡ Fanqing Li,† and Yankuan Liu‡
Division of Nanomaterials & Chemistry, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, Structure Research Laboratory of CAS, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, People's Republic of China, Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, People's Republic of China, and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, People's Republic of China
Chem. Mater., 2006, 18 (1), pp 115–122
DOI: 10.1021/cm0519028
Publication Date (Web): December 10, 2005
Copyright © 2006 American Chemical Society
†

 Structure Research Laboratory of CAS.

,
§

 Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

,
*

 Correspondence should be addressed to this author. Fax:  + 86 551 3603040. E-mail:  shyu@ustc.edu.cn.

,
‡

 Department of Chemistry.

Abstract

Abstract Image

Polymorph discrimination of CaCO3 mineral has been easily realized in an ethanol/water mixed solution system under mild conditions without using any organic additives. The phase transition from a mixture of calcite and aragonite to pure aragonite, and then to almost pure vaterite, can be nicely captured by the choice of a suitable ratio of ethanol to distilled water in the present reaction system. In addition, a complex self-assembly process for the formation of multilayered vaterite cakes in this binary solution system has been proposed. The cakelike vaterite crystals with multilayered structures are porous with an average pore size of 24.9 nm. The results demonstrated that such a binary reaction media could provide an alternative and versatile tool for controlling the polymorph and nanostructures of inorganic minerals through manipulating the thermodynamics and kinetics. This study provides an alternative polymorph switching route for CaCO3 mineral without using any additives and can even be scaled up as a green chemistry method for the industrial production of CaCO3 with different polymorphs.

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History

  • Published In Issue January 10, 2006
  • Received August 23, 2005
    Revised Manuscript Received October 31, 2005

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