Crystallization by Amorphous Particle Attachment: On the Evolution of Texture

Vanessa Schoeppler; Deborah Stier; Richard J Best; Chengyu Song; John Turner; Benjamin H Savitzky; Colin Ophus; Matthew A Marcus; Shiteng Zhao; Karen Bustillo; Igor Zlotnikov

doi:10.1002/adma.202101358

Crystallization by Amorphous Particle Attachment: On the Evolution of Texture

Adv Mater. 2021 Sep;33(37):e2101358. doi: 10.1002/adma.202101358. Epub 2021 Aug 1.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ B CUBE - Center for Molecular Bioengineering, Technische Universität Dresden, 01307, Dresden, Germany.
² Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
³ National Center for Electron Microscopy, Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁴ Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.

Abstract

Crystallization by particle attachment (CPA) is a gradual process where each step has its own thermodynamic and kinetic constrains defining a unique pathway of crystal growth. An important example is biomineralization of calcium carbonate through amorphous precursors that are morphed into shapes and textural patterns that cannot be envisioned by the classical monomer-by-monomer approach. Here, a mechanistic link between the collective kinetics of mineral deposition and the emergence of crystallographic texture is established. Using the prismatic ultrastructure in bivalve shells as a model, a fundamental leap is made in the ability to analytically describe the evolution of form and texture of biological mineralized tissues and to design the structure and crystallographic properties of synthetic materials formed by CPA.

Keywords: amorphous particle attachment; biomineralization; calcite; crystal growth; dislocations; lattice twist; texture.

Abstract

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