Calcite is one of the most common and widely used minerals with applications including construction, acid neutralizing soil treatments, and pharmaceuticals.  Hence, calcite dissolution in various aqueous environments has been extensively studied.  While there is a large experimental database and it is well known that the solvent environment at the interface greatly affects the dissolution process, there is still variation in experimental dissolution rates of calcite.  These uncertainties have led to disagreement in the mechanism of dissolution.  Our research uses in-situ surface probes such as vibrational Sum-Frequency Generation (vSFG) and in-situ Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to better understand the dissolution of calcite in aqueous environments containing different ionic species.  With vSFG, we can probe the interaction of water molecules at the interface and hence better understand the dissolution process.  Using in-situ AFM, we can track pit formation and consequently derive the etching rate with crystallographic specificity.

In-situ investigation of calcite dissolution in aqueous environments

248th National Meeting (2014)

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