Morphology of barium hydrogen phosphate formation induced by phosphate-mineralization microbe

Abstract

Phosphate-mineralization microbe was chosen to study the influences of bacterial mixture, filtrate, bacteria solution, bacterial body and bacterial secretion on barium hydrogen phosphate crystal formation. The chemical compositions and structures of samples were characterized with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and X-ray diffraction techniques (XRD), revealing that the crystal morphology of barium hydrogen phosphate was dumbbell-shaped pattern, nanoparticles via aggregate clusters, irregular sphere with different sizes. The results indicated that bacterial body and bacterial secretion could induce the formation of irregular quadrilateral and spheres, respectively. But the effect of bacterial secretion was stronger than that of bacterial body when induced barium hydrogen phosphate crystal in bacteria solution. However, the crystals form could be affected only in bacterial mixture, but filtrate could induce the formation of nanoparticles. As a result, the bacteria and metabolites play an important role in the process of crystal nucleation, growth, and accumulation of barium hydrogen phosphate.