Structural characteristics of synthetic amorphous calcium carbonate

Amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) is an important phase involved in calcification by a wide variety of invertebrate organisms and is of technological interest in the development of functional materials. Despite widespread scientific interest in this phase a full characterization of structure is lacking. This is mainly due to its metastability and difficulties in evaluating structure using conventional structure determination methods. Here we present new findings from the application of two techniques, pair distribution function analysis and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which provide new insight to structural aspects of synthetic ACC. Several important results have emerged from this study of ACC formed in vitro using two common preparation methods: (1) ACC exhibits no structural coherence over distances > 15 angstrom and is truly amorphous; (2) most of the hydrogen in ACC is present as structural H2O, about half of which undergoes restricted motion on the millisecond time scale near room temperature; (3) the short- and intermediate-range structure of ACC shows no distinct match to any known structure in the calcium carbonate system; and (4) most of the carbonate in ACC is monodentate making it distinctly different from monohydrocalcite. Although the structure of synthetic ACC is still not fully understood, the results presented provide an important baseline for future experiments evaluating biogenic ACC and samples containing certain additives that may play a role in stabilization of ACC, crystallization kinetics, and final polymorph selection.