Growth of Prussian Blue Microcubes under a Hydrothermal Condition:  Possible Nonclassical Crystallization by a Mesoscale Self-Assembly

Abstract

A classical crystallization process starts from stable nuclei followed by a simple enlargement of the nuclei by unit-cell replication. In recent years, the universality of such classical crystallization has been questioned upon investigations of biomineralization processes, and there are few examples showing that crystal growth may not follow such a classical crystallization process. In this paper, a typical coordination polymer, Prussian blue microcrystals, has been synthesized under hydrothermal conditions. By carefully analyzing the intermediates during the crystal growth process, we found that the growth of Prussian blue under the given growth conditions may follow a nonclassical crystal growth process in which a mesoscale self-assembly of nanocrystallites is included during crystal growth. Such a mesoscale self-assembly process could be a common phenomenon for growth of some crystals with extremely low solubility.

New faces of porous Prussian blue: interfacial assembly of integrated hetero-structures for sensing applications

“…Interfacial assembly by seed mediated growth A classical crystallization process starts from stable nuclei followed by a simple enlargement of the nuclei by unit-cell replication. 102 By analyzing the intermediates during the seed mediated assembly process, the growth of PB followed a nonclassical process where a mesoscale self-assembly of nanocrystallites was included during the process. Recently, Zheng et al have developed a seed mediated growth method via a nonclassical crystal process for assembly of PB microcrystals, which were synthesized using a hydrothermal method (Fig.…”

“…(b) Particles with special morphology in the products, such as ''L'' type, frame, and hollow microcube, in contrast to convex polyhedra, resulted from a classical crystallization 102. (b) Particles with special morphology in the products, such as ''L'' type, frame, and hollow microcube, in contrast to convex polyhedra, resulted from a classical crystallization 102.…”

Limitation of adsorptive penetration of cesium into Prussian blue crystallite

“…PB is categorized into two types in terms of its dispersibility and/or its chemical composition: Insoluble and soluble PBs (Buser et al 1977;Itaya et al 1986;Keggin and Miles 1936;Louise et al 2013). Also, various kinds of synthesis methods can provide different sizes and morphologies of crystallites of PB (Hu et al 2009(Hu et al , 2012aLouise et al 2013;Torad et al 2012;Wu et al 2006;Zheng et al 2007). The post-synthesis etching approach also expanded the possibility of morphology control of the PB crystallites (Hu et al 2012b, c;Torad et al 2012).…”

Effect of alkali cations on heterogeneous photo-Fenton process mediated by Prussian blue colloids

“…It is also the first coordination compound reported in scientific literature. The basic structure of Prussian blue is a threedimensional polymeric network [40][41][42] with a face-centered cubic cell [40,43,44] consisting of alternating ferric (coordinated to nitrogen) and ferrous (coordinated to carbon atom) ions linked via the bridging cyanide ligands. The lattice constant of the unit cell is 10.20 Å (Fig.…”