title: Water-soluble terpolymer-mediated calcium carbonate crystal modification.
abstract: The structure of the polymeric substrate plays an important role in the nucleation of calcium carbonate crystals. In this study a synthetic water-soluble poly(acrylamide-co-2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propane sodium sufonate-co-n-vinyl pyrrolidone) was found to be a substrate favoring the nucleation of polymorphs of calcium carbonate crystals under specific experimental conditions. Morphological characterization of the polymorphs was done using atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, FTIR analysis, and X-ray diffraction. If calcium carbonate is precipitated in the presence of terpolymer, a remarkable increase in nucleation density (number of crystals per unit area) was observed. Stacked crystals of rhombohedral morphology that formed may be due to the presence of sodium sulfonate groups on the terpolymer. However, in the presence of poly-L-aspartic acid, almost all crystals are hollow and have needlelike or plate like morphology was formed. This change in calcium carbonate morphology can be explained by the variation of the polymer conformation, if poly- L-aspartic acid is present.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Physics, University of Ulm, D-89069 Ulm, Germany. ranjith.krishna-pai@physik.uni-ulm.de
authors.forename: Ranjith Krishna
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Pai
authors.forename: Sabine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hild
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ziegler
authors.forename: Othmar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Marti