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A Perspective on the Particle-Based Crystal Growth of Ferric Oxides, Oxyhydroxides, and Hydrous Oxides

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Abstract

The iron oxides, oxyhydroxides, and hydroxides, which are commonly referred to as simply the iron oxides, are important materials at and near the Earth’s surface and in a wide range of industrial settings. The reactivity, phase transformations, and aggregation state of iron oxide minerals are fundamentally linked. The size, microstructure, and morphology of iron oxide crystals are path dependent, and specific features can potentially be linked directly to the crystal growth mechanism(s) that produced them. Many conclusions regarding crystal growth mechanism rely on characterization of the final crystals, and this approach has been fruitful. The iron oxides literature contains many reports of crystals with textures, morphologies, and microstructures that are consistent with particle-based crystal growth. However, multiple crystal growth mechanisms can operate simultaneously, which lead to erasure of features produced at earlier stages of crystal growth. Thus, time-resolved and in situ materials characterization is crucial to elucidating the crystal growth mechanisms of iron oxides.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the University of Minnesota, the National Science Foundation (No. NSF-0957696), and the Nanostructural Materials and Processes Program at the University of Minnesota for the financial support. We also thank Characterization Facility at the University of Minnesota, a member of the NSF-funded Materials Research Facilities Network (www.mrfn.org) via the MRSEC program (Figs. 13.2, 13.3, and 13.4). In addition, the TEM images shown in Fig. 13.5 were obtained using a Tecnai TF20 FEI microscope located at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is operated by Battelle Memorial Institute for the US Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-76RL01830.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, University of Minnesota, 207 Pleasant St SE, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    R. Lee Penn & Jennifer A. Soltis

  2. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Boulevard, Richland, WA, 99352, USA

    Dongsheng Li

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  1. R. Lee Penn
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  2. Dongsheng Li
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  3. Jennifer A. Soltis
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Correspondence to R. Lee Penn .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University Grenoble Alpes CNRS, ISTerre, Grenoble, France

    Alexander E.S. Van Driessche

  2. Material Physics, BASF SE, Ludwigshafen, Germany

    Matthias Kellermeier

  3. German Research Center for Geosciences, GFZ, Interface Geochemistry Section, Potsdam, Germany

    Liane G. Benning

  4. Department of Chemistry Physical Chemistry, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

    Denis Gebauer

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Penn, R.L., Li, D., Soltis, J.A. (2017). A Perspective on the Particle-Based Crystal Growth of Ferric Oxides, Oxyhydroxides, and Hydrous Oxides. In: Van Driessche, A., Kellermeier, M., Benning, L., Gebauer, D. (eds) New Perspectives on Mineral Nucleation and Growth. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45669-0_13

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