Studying the early stages of CaCO3 formation using a microfluidic spray dryer

Event details

Date	17.05.2018
Hour	16:40 › 17:05
Speaker	Huachuan Du - EPFL STI IMX Soft Materials Laboratory (SMAL)
Location	MED 0 1418
Category	Conferences - Seminars

Abstract Calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) is one of the most abundant biominerals that nature often uses as a structural material because of its excellent mechanical properties. Inspired by nature, a lot of work has been devoted to produce CaCO₃-based materials. The key to gain a better control over the mechanical properties of CaCO₃-based materials is to have a better understanding of formation mechanism of CaCO₃. Here, we produce amorphous CaCO₃ (ACC) particles using a microfluidic spray-drier that quenches the formation of CaCO₃ within 100 ms to 10s. This fast quenching enables studying the evolution of the structure and composition of ACC particles that form during early stages without the need for any external quenching agents. We show that the amount of mobile water of ACC particles increases with increasing formation time and hence with increasing particle size. As a result, larger particles are less stable than smaller counterparts. These insights into the influence of the formation time of ACC on the quantity of mobile water contained in them and their stability might open up new opportunities to fabricate biomimetic CaCO₃-based materials with tunable structures.

Bio Huachuan Du is studying his PhD in Prof. Esther Amstad’s group where he uses the microfluidic spray-drying technique to study the crystallization process. He obtained his master degree in the Materials Science and Engineering section at EPFL in 2015. Prior to that, he did his bachelor in Chemical Engineering at Harbin Institute of Technology in China and Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea.