"Bio-inspired crystal growth: Interfaces between polymers and crystals"
Biomineralization, the study of how organisms form minerals such as bones, teeth, and shells, provides examples of strategies for controlling the growth of crystalline materials patterned at the nanoscale. In particular, the concept of crystal growth in confinement has led to many interesting synthetic structures. In this presentation, I will focus on our recent efforts to use confinement within track-etched membranes to force the incorporation of a secondary phase with single crystals and the use of block copolymers to template the surface confined precipitation of crystalline transition metal oxides with periodicities on the order of 50 nm. For both of these strategies, I will present results related to the formation mechanisms and internal structures of the resulting nanostructured oxides. I will also our discuss recent fluid cell Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) studies of calcite growth in the presence of polymeric micelles with varying surface chemistries. These results have the potential to lead to design criteria for polymer-reinforced crystalline materials with unique structure-property relationships. In addition, insights provided by this work may help to elucidate the formation mechanism(s) and properties of biogenic single crystals with incorporated organic material.
