Kavli Affiliate: Joanna Aizenberg
| First 5 Authors: Giulia Magnabosco, Iryna Polishchuk, Francesco Palomba, Enrico Rampazzo, Luca Prodi
| Summary:
Inclusion of additives into calcite crystals allows one to embed non-native
proprieties into the inorganic matrix and obtain new functional materials. Up
to now, few parameters have been taken into account to evaluate the efficiency
of inclusion of an additive. Taking inspiration from Nature, we grew calcite
crystals in the presence of fluorescent silica nanoparticles carrying different
functional groups (PluS-X) to investigate the effect of surface chemistry on
the inclusion of the additives. PluS-X allowed us to keep constant all the
particle characteristics, including size, while changing exposed functional
groups and thus Zeta-potential. The effect on crystal morphology, the loading
and distribution of PluS-X within the crystals have been evaluated with
different microscopy techniques. Our data indicate that hydroxyl functionalized
particles are entrapped more efficiently inside calcite single crystals without
distortion of the crystal structure and inhibition of the growth.
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