Controlled Synthesis and Microstructure of Metastable Flower-Like Vaterite

Yebin Guan; Xiaohong Wang; Weicheng Cao; Gentao Zhou

doi:10.3390/ma11112300

Controlled Synthesis and Microstructure of Metastable Flower-Like Vaterite

Materials (Basel). 2018 Nov 16;11(11):2300. doi: 10.3390/ma11112300.

Authors

Yebin Guan^{1

2

3}, Xiaohong Wang⁴, Weicheng Cao⁵, Gentao Zhou⁶

Affiliations

¹ Anhui Key Laboratory of Functional Coordination Compounds, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Anqing Normal University, Anqing 246011, China. guanyb@aqnu.edu.cn.
² CAS Key Laboratory of Crust-Mantle Materials and Environments, School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China. guanyb@aqnu.edu.cn.
³ Center for Chemistry of Novel & High-Performance Materials, and Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China. guanyb@aqnu.edu.cn.
⁴ Anhui Key Laboratory of Functional Coordination Compounds, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Anqing Normal University, Anqing 246011, China. wangxiaohong@aqnu.edu.cn.
⁵ Center for Chemistry of Novel & High-Performance Materials, and Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China. caowc@zju.edu.cn.
⁶ CAS Key Laboratory of Crust-Mantle Materials and Environments, School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China. gtzhou@ustc.edu.cn.

Abstract

Developing a simple morphology-controlled synthesis of metastable vaterite is a goal in the field of materials research. In this paper, we successfully synthesized flower-like dendritic vaterite crystals using a microwave method with 2-naphthaleneacetic acid (2-NAA) and ethylene glycol (EG) as the regulating additives. The results show that the morphology of vaterite could be regulated by inducing a monolayer or multilayer flower-like structure with the appropriate choice of regulators. Interestingly, the microstructure analysis showed that such flower-like vaterite dendrites host two different kinds of crystal cells. The negative carbonate 2-NAA effectively neutralized the charge of the vaterite (001) plane, resulting in the crystalline growth along the direction parallel to it and inducing a flower-like morphology. This experiment reveals an alternative approach to controlling hierarchical structures during the synthesis of similar classes of minerals.

Keywords: 2-naphthaleneacetic acid (2-NAA); calcium carbonate; microwave; vaterite.

Abstract

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