Issue 43, 2023

Using phenolic polymers to control the size and morphology of calcium carbonate microparticles

Abstract

Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) is a naturally occurring mineral that occurs in biology and is used industrially. Due to its benign nature, CaCO3 microparticles have found use in the food and medical fields, where the specific size of the microparticles determine their functionality and potential applications. We demonstrate that phenolic polymers with different numbers of hydroxy groups can be used to control the diameter of CaCO3 microparticles in a range of 2–9 μm, and obtained particles were relatively uniform. The largest particles (∼9 μm in diameter) were obtained using poly(2,3,4,5-tetrahydroxystyrene) (P4HS), which showed the highest water solubility among the tested phenolic polymers. The polymer concentration and stirring speed influenced the size of microparticles, where the size of the obtained particles became smaller as the concentrations of phenolic polymers increased and as the stirring speed increased, both likely due to promoting the formation of a large number of individual crystal seeds by shielding seed–seed fusion and increasing the chances for precursor contact, respectively. The preparation time and temperature had a great influence on the morphology of the CaCO3 particles, where vaterite transforms into calcite over time. Specifically, aragonite crystals were observed at preparation temperature of 80 °C and vaterite particles with rough surfaces were obtained at 40 °C. Molecular weight and scale of reaction were also factors which affect the size and morphologies of CaCO3 particles. This research represents a facile method for producing relatively monodisperse CaCO3 microparticles with diameters that have previously proven difficult to access.

Graphical abstract: Using phenolic polymers to control the size and morphology of calcium carbonate microparticles

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
17 Jul 2023
Accepted
09 Oct 2023
First published
18 Oct 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

RSC Adv., 2023,13, 30539-30547

Using phenolic polymers to control the size and morphology of calcium carbonate microparticles

Y. Nakanishi, B. Cheng, J. J. Richardson and H. Ejima, RSC Adv., 2023, 13, 30539 DOI: 10.1039/D3RA04791A

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