Chapter 5 ACC and Vaterite as Intermediates in the Solution-Based Crystallization of CaCO3 Juan Diego Rodriguez-Blanco, Karina K. Sand, and Liane G. Benning 5.1 Introduction Calcium carbonate minerals are ubiquitous on Earth where they play a key role in many marine and terrestrial biomineralization processes (e.g., see also Chap. 9 by Falini and Fermani in this book). Their ubiquitous nature makes them key players in controlling a large part of the global carbon cycle. At ambient temperatures, they very often crystallize from solution via two intermediate phases: amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) and vaterite. ACC is a poorly ordered material (50–500 nm) (Rodriguez-Blanco et al. 2008) that in its pure form (no other cations but Ca2C present at formation) consist of a Ca-rich framework with 1-nm diameter interconnected pores that contain water and carbonate ions (Goodwin et al. 2010). In recent years, ACC has been shown to J.D. Rodriguez-Blanco () Department of Geology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland NanoScience Center, Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail:
[email protected];
[email protected] K.K. Sand NanoScience Center, Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Physical Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, Richland, WA, USA 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 © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 93 A.E.S. Van Driessche et al.