Special Vaterite Found in Freshwater Lackluster Pearls
Li Qiao
Qing-Ling Feng
Zhuo Li
10.1021/cg060309f.s001
https://acs.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Special_Vaterite_Found_in_Freshwater_Lackluster_Pearls/3027544
In recent years, scientists have special interests in biovaterite found in freshwater cultured lackluster pearls in south
China. Vaterite is an unstable crystalline form of calcium carbonate and rare in nature. In this work, we first reported that vaterite
crystals in freshwater lackluster pearls have a similar hiberarchy to that of nacre with the “brick and mortar” structure. The dimension
of a single vaterite tablet is approximate 8 × 2 × 0.4 μm<sup>3</sup>. In half-lackluster pearls, the aragonite−vaterite interface is abrupt, and
the boundary is sequential; two different kinds of contact modes between aragonite and vaterite tablets were observed. Furthermore,
crystallographic orientation regulation of vaterite tablets was analyzed for the first time. The results show that vaterite tablets are
arrayed with the [010] direction perpendicular to the tablet plane; strong [010] texture and relatively weak [101] and [102] texture
were obtained in a region from several neighboring tablets to micrometer scale. In addition, the misorientation angles between
adjacent tablets mainly concentrate on small angles lower than 10° and have another gather in 60°.
2007-02-07 00:00:00
vaterite tablets
pearl
Special Vaterite Found