Templated growth of calcite, vaterite and aragonite crystals onself-assembled monolayers of substituted alkylthiols on gold

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Making use of extensive scanning electron microscopy and the Rietveld analysis of X-ray diffraction profiles, we have studied the morphology, crystal habits and phase compositions of crystals of calcium carbonate grown on modified organic surfaces by precipitation from solution. The studies have been aimed at modeling natural biomineralization processes of the ubiquitous mineral forms of CaCO3 , viz. calcite, vaterite and aragonite. The parameters that could be controlled and were indeed found to drastically influence the crystallization were the thiol chain length, the ω-substituent on the thiol and the temperature at which crystallization was carried out. As many as ten different thiol modified substrates, apart from glass and clean gold surfaces were used for the templating. Such a heuristic study offers considerable insight into the nature of templated crystallization and has implications for the understanding of biomineralization processes.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: