Microstructural characterization of the calcite mineral

Student's name: Yusuke Morita Name of Home institution: Tohoku University NNCI Site: ShyNE @ Northwestern University REU Principal Investigator: Professor Vinayak Dravid, Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University REU Mentors: Xiaobing Hu, Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University Abstract: Studying calcite (CaCO3) is important because it plays a crucial role in environmental processes, industrial applications, and biological systems, impacting everything from climate change to material science and marine ecosystems. At high pressures and temperatures, calcite undergoes a phase transformation to the polymorph aragonite. The lack of atomic scale investigations and elemental analysis around planar defects within calcite prohibit from understanding the mechanism. In this work, we use scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to characterize general morphologies, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) for atomic scale analysis, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS), and SEM-electron dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) for elemental analysis. Those results will improve our understanding of transition mechanism about calcite to aragonite which helps countless studies. Using these advanced techniques will improve our understanding of calcite transformation mechanisms, and it will enhance scientific research by providing deeper insights into fundamental geological processes, improving the development of advanced materials, and informing environmental strategies for carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation.