Particle-based hematite crystallization is invariant to initial particle morphology

Yining Wang; Sichuang Xue; Qingyun Lin; Duo Song; Yang He; Lili Liu; Jianbin Zhou; Meirong Zong; James J De Yoreo; Junwu Zhu; Kevin M Rosso; Maria L Sushko; Xin Zhang

doi:10.1073/pnas.2112679119

Particle-based hematite crystallization is invariant to initial particle morphology

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Mar 15;119(11):e2112679119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2112679119. Epub 2022 Mar 11.

Authors

Yining Wang^{1

2}, Sichuang Xue¹, Qingyun Lin^{1

3

4}, Duo Song¹, Yang He^{1

5}, Lili Liu¹, Jianbin Zhou¹, Meirong Zong¹, James J De Yoreo^{1

6}, Junwu Zhu², Kevin M Rosso¹, Maria L Sushko¹, Xin Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Physical & Computational Science Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99354.
² Key Laboratory for Soft Chemistry and Functional Materials, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China.
³ Center of Electron Microscopy, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
⁵ Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Materials Genome Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 10083, China.
⁶ Materials Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195.

Abstract

SignificanceMany crystallization processes occurring in nature produce highly ordered hierarchical architectures. Their formation cannot be explained using classical models of monomer-by-monomer growth. One of the possible pathways involves crystallization through the attachment of oriented nanocrystals. Thus, it requires detailed understanding of the mechanism of particle dynamics that leads to their precise crystallographic alignment along specific faces. In this study, we discover a particle-morphology-independent oriented attachment mechanism for hematite nanocrystals. Independent of crystal morphology, particles always align along the [001] direction driven by aligning interactions between (001) faces and repulsive interactions between other pairs of hematite faces. These results highlight that strong face specificity along one crystallographic direction can render oriented attachment to be independent of initial particle morphology.

Keywords: hematite; interfacial force; nonclassical crystallization; oriented attachment (OA); particle-based crystallization.