Nanoparticle nucleation often form at environmental interfaces that provide remarkable reactive sites for heterogeneous nucleation and growth. Naturally occurring nucleation processes significantly contribute to the biogeochemical cycles of important components in the Earth’s crust. Furthermore, a deeper understanding of nucleation of nanoparticles will enable us to design a sustainable synthetic process in engineered systems. In this talk, I will introduce our recent in situ study of the heterogeneous nucleation of calcium carbonate on quartz in aqueous systems, and present their thermodynamic and kinetic information. To investigate the size and total particle volume of heterogeneously formed CaCO3 nanoparticles in situ and in real-time, we utilized grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) along with atomic force microscopy (AFM). Using these techniques and the classical nucleation rate equation, for the first time, we determined the apparent activation energy and the pre-exponential kinetic factor of heterogeneous calcium carbonate nucleation on quartz. This finding can lead to a more accurate quantitative prediction of the behaviors of nanoparticles in the environment and enable us to better control of the physicochemical properties of newly synthesized nanoparticles and their occurrence in engineered systems.

Thermodynamics and kinetics of heterogeneously nucleated calcium carbonate on quartz

2019 Spring National Meeting

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