Publication Date:
2003-02-22
Description:
Micropatterning of single crystals for technological applications is a complex, multistep process. Nature provides alternative fabrication strategies, when crystals with exquisite micro-ornamentation directly develop within preorganized frameworks. We report a bio-inspired approach to growing large micropatterned single crystals. Micropatterned templates organically modified to induce the formation of metastable amorphous calcium carbonate were imprinted with calcite nucleation sites. The template-directed deposition and crystallization of the amorphous phase resulted in the fabrication of millimeter-sized single calcite crystals with sub-10-micron patterns and controlled crystallographic orientation. We suggest that in addition to regulating the shape, micropatterned frameworks act as sites for stress and impurity release during the amorphous-to-crystalline transition. The proposed mechanisms may have direct biological relevance and broad implications in materials synthesis.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Aizenberg, Joanna -- Muller, David A -- Grazul, John L -- Hamann, D R -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2003 Feb 21;299(5610):1205-8.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Bell Laboratories/Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12595685" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Calcium Carbonate/*chemistry
;
Crystallization
;
Crystallography
;
Echinodermata/chemistry
;
*Macromolecular Substances
;
Microscopy, Electron
;
Organic Chemicals/*chemistry
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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