Chapter 12 Calcium Sulfate Precipitation Throughout Its Phase Diagram Alexander E.S. Van Driessche, Tomasz M. Stawski, Liane G. Benning, and Matthias Kellermeier 12.1 Introduction Over the past decade, significant progress has been made in our understanding of crystallization phenomena. In particular, a number of precursor and intermediate species, both solutes and solids, and either stable or metastable (or even unstable), have been identified. Their existence extends the simplified picture of classical nucleation and growth theories toward much more complex pathways. These newly found species include various solute clusters, liquid-like phases, amorphous particles, and metastable (often nanosized) crystalline polymorphs, all of which may exist for different periods and may convert into one another depending on the chosen conditions (see, for instance, De Yoreo et al. 2017, Chap. 1; Wolf and Gower 2017, Chap. 3; Rodriguez-Blanco et al. 2017, Chap. 5; Birkedal 2017, Chap. 10; Reichel and Faivre 2017, Chap. 14, and references therein). Quite naturally, most A.E.S. Van Driessche Driessche () University Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, ISTerre, F-38000 Grenoble, France e-mail:
[email protected] T.M. Stawski German Research Centre for Geosciences, GFZ, D-14473 Potsdam, Germany School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT Leeds, UK L.G. Benning German Research Center for Geosciences, GFZ, Interface Geochemistry Section, 14473 Potsdam, Germany Department of Earth Sciences, Free University of Berlin, 12249 Berlin, Germany School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK M. Kellermeier () Material Physics, BASF SE, Carl-Bosch-Str. 38, D-67056 Ludwigshafen, Germany e-mail:
[email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 227 A.E.S.