Chapter 4. Nanocomposite Formation through Interactions
4.3. Results
4.3.2. Anisotropic adsorption and growth retardation of
introduced during CaSO4 crystallization. The aspect ratio of CaSO4•0.5H2O hexagonal columns was significantly reduced as the amount of added PAA was increased (Figure 4.5). In the absence of PAA, the growth along columnar c- axis is much faster than others since the polar {001} plane consists of alternating cation (Ca2+) and anion (SO42-) layers (Figure 4.6). As PAA has negative charges, the adsorption of PAA on CaSO4•0.5H2O crystals is the strongest on {001} plane when the surface exposes cations. The observed reduction of aspect ratio of the crystals suggests that PAA is predominantly
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Figure 4.5. (A) Transition of crystal forms induced by the adsorption and growth interference of PAA2K in the crystallization of CaSO4 hemihydrate.
The amount of added PAA was varied, while the concentration of CaSO4 was maintained at 0.2 mmol/L. (B) Corresponding X-ray diffraction patterns. The crystalline peaks sharply disappear at a PAA concentration of 7.21 μg/mL, where the crystals cannot develop their {200} and {220} hexagonal side facets.
Background diffractions (ca. 330) from Si substrates are noted.
adsorbed at the cationic layer of {001} surface. Negatively charged PAA can interact with and adsorb onto such polar surfaces, and therefore hinder the growth of the specific plane.
The effect of PAA on the retardation of crystal growth was further characterized by XRD (Figure 4.5B). When the PAA2K concentration exceeds a certain critical level (ca. 7.2 μg/mL), crystalline peaks of {200} and {220}
planes disappear, as these planes are responsible for the diffraction from the side faces of hexagonal column. (Note that selected area electron diffraction (SAED) data are shown in Figure 4.7) The decline of crystalline peaks was consistent with the reduction of the aspect ratio. Hence, we defined the critical PAA concentrations (Ccrit,PAA) as the concentration where the crystallinity of {200} disappears.
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Figure 4.6. Shape modification effect of PAA due to the anisotropic growth retardation. (A) As the amount of added PAA is increased, the growth along polar [001] axis was severely retarded, while the growth along non-polar directions was relatively intact. Consequently, the dominant faces were converted from non-polar sides of hexagonal column to polar top and bottom.
(B) Diffraction from polar {204} planes, a signature of growth retardation along the polar direction, was revealed from thin film X-ray diffraction on a Si substrate. It is noted that diffractions from the {200} and {220} planes, which were very intense in the absence of PAA, have disappeared. Red lines indicate typical diffraction peaks from CaSO4 hemihydrate. (C) Detailed section of crystal planes (200), (220), (001), and (204) of CaSO4 hemihydrate constructed by crystallography software VESTA. Calcium ion (Ca2+) is denoted yellow, while sulfur atom of sulfate ion (SO42-) is denoted blue.
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Figure 4.7. TEM images and corresponding selected area electron diffraction of CaSO4 hemihydrate crystals in the presence of polymeric additives. (A, B) PAA5K additives with concentrations of 3.6 and 7.2 μg/mL, respectively. (C, D) SAA19K additives with number concentrations of 0.07 and 0.35 μmol/L, respectively. Above the critical polymer concentration, both PAA and SAA BCM inhibit the growth along c-axis, which is verified by the extinction of {200} diffraction. This is consistent with the XRD data.
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Figure 4.8.Effect of the degree of ionization (α) of PAA2K on the interference of CaSO4 hemihydrate crystallization at a PAA concentration of 7.21 μg/mL.
Series of α values were calculated for the solution at the onset point of crystallization (50 vol% of DMF).
Figure 4.9. The pKa of PAA in the water/DMF mixed solvents is higher than that in the aqueous solution (pKa ~ 4.5) since the dissociation of carboxylic acid is more difficult in less polar media. Due to the lack of information for pKa of PAA in the mixed solvents, pKa of analogous propionic acid (~ 5.8) were taken for the construction of degree of ionization curves.3 The dotted line represents the degree of ionization (α) of PAA in aqueous solution, and the red line represents α in a water/DMF mixed solvent (50/50 v/v). Change of the activity of water was considered for the calculation of acid-base equilibrium in the mixed solvents.
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The adsorption of PAA is based on electrostatic interaction, thereby can be controlled with the degree of ionization (α) of PAA. As a result, in Figure 4.8, the crystal shape largely depends on the α of PAA, which was tuned by pH of solvent (Figure 4.9). Without added salts, PAA at the onset point (i.e., 50 vol% of DMF) has a small fraction of charge (α ≈ 0.05) but it is sufficient to induce the preferential adsorption of PAA on the polar surfaces and the subsequent shape transition. The shape of crystals is much closer to thin sheets exposing PAA-adsorbed polar planes when α ≈ 0.5 (0.5 equiv. NaOH of acrylate repeating unit was added). In contrast, the addition of 0.5 equiv. HCl almost eliminates dissociated fraction of PAA (α ≈ 0), thereby shuts off the adsorption and consequent growth retarding effect of PAA.
Furthermore, the effect of molecular weight of PAA (M) on the crystal shape transition was studied. The increase in the molecular weight of PAA weakens the effect of adsorption and shape transition (Figure 4.10 and Figure 4.11). Compared with the case of PAA2K, the crystals formed in the presence of PAA12K and PAA50K show less perturbed columnar shape. Ccrit,PAA as a function of molecular weight between 2 kg/mol to 50 kg/mol was carefully measured using XRD as shown in Figure 4.10B. We found the scaling relationship between Ccrit,PAA and the molecular weight of PAA as Ccrit,PAA ~ M1-
v, where ν is the Flory-Huggins exponent which was determined by DLS experiments (Rh ~ Mν). Herein ν was found to be 0.414, since the Ca2+ ions present in the solution bound to and weakly condensed the charged PAA (Figure 4.12). This scaling relationship will be discussed in detail in the following sections.
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Figure 4.10.Effect of the PAA molecular weight on the interference of CaSO4
hemihydrate crystallization. (A) PAA12K and PAA50K did not effectively interfere the crystallization of CaSO4 hemihydrate when compared with shorter PAAs, e.g., PAA2K. (B) Critical PAA concentrations (Ccrit,PAA) at which the crystalline peaks disappear showed linear dependence with M1-ν, where M is the molecular weight of PAA, and ν is the Flory-Huggins exponent.
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Figure 4.11. The critical PAA concentration as a function of PAA molecular weight at 30 ºC and evaporation temperature with PAA5k.
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Figure 4.12. Log-log plot of the hydrodynamic radius (Rh) versus PAA molecular weights. Rh with 5 different molecular weights were measured by the dynamic light scattering. Solvent was matched with the appropriate condition of the solution at the onset point of CaSO4 hemihydrate crystallization (i.e., the water/DMF mixed solvent (50/50 v/v)). Also, the amount of Ca2+ ion relative to the amount of PAA repeating unit was matched (i.e., the molar ratio of Ca2+/PAA repeating unit = 0.2). For this condition, Rh was found to scale as Rh
~ Mv (v = 0.414), which suggests that the PAA chain has more compact conformation than the ideal chain (v = 0.5). This is due to the condensation of divalent counterion, Ca2+, at the charged sites of PAA.
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Lastly, we varied the rate of crystal growth and measured Ccrit,PAA. The rate of crystal growth was tuned by varying the evaporation rate, recalling that the growth of crystal was subject to the progression of evaporation. Experimentally, temperature of the evaporating droplet was adjusted with a heating apparatus while the ambient condition (22°C and 40% of relative humidity) was kept constant, so that evaporation was faster at higher temperature. Both the transition of the crystal shape and the corresponding disappearance of the XRD peaks showed that the growth inhibition was accelerated by lowering the evaporation temperature (Figure 4.11 and Figure 4.13). Therefore, Ccrit,PAA was found to increase with the evaporation temperature (T). To take into account the temperature dependence of both the change of evaporation rate and PAA diffusion coefficient, Ccrit,PAA was also plotted against temperature-dependent characteristic parameter ηΔP/T, where η is the solvent viscosity, and ΔP is the vapor pressure difference between liquid water and ambient air, which is proportional to the rate of evaporation (Table 4.2). This characteristic parameter was found to be linearly correlated with Ccrit,PAA with good accuracy, which will be discussed further in the following section 4.1.
Table 4.2. Properties of solvents used in this study at various temperatures
Temperature (oC)
Vapor pressure of liquid water (torr)
Viscosity of mixed solvent, water/DMF (50/50 v/v) (mPa·s)
22 20 2.636
30 32 2.051
36 44 1.759
48 80 1.295
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Figure 4.13. Effect of the evaporation rate on the interference of CaSO4
hemihydrate crystallization by polymeric additives. (A, B) SEM and XRD analysis showed that the interference of PAA in CaSO4 crystallization was stronger at lower temperature (i.e., slowly evaporating droplet). The evaporation rate was the decisive factor for the rate of crystal growth. All the samples contained 14.4 μg/mL of PAA5K. (C) Critical PAA concentrations plotted against the product of solvent viscosity (η), vapor pressure difference between liquid water and ambient air (ΔP), and inverse temperature (1/T). The linear fit was forced to zero.
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