Investigating liquid-like mineral phases in crowded media

更可持续和更有效的结晶过程无疑将改善我们社会和子孙后代的健康和繁荣。我们每天都使用结晶技术来生产药品、种植农作物、制造食品、建造建筑物和制造技术设备。此外，了解结晶过程有助于防止与阿尔茨海默氏症、肾结石、动脉粥样硬化等疾病有关的生物结晶。在传统的溶液结晶描述中，微小的晶体首先形成，然后通过堆积单个离子或分子而变大。然而，一个新出现的概念表明，晶体在成为最终的固体晶体之前，可能会经历类似液体的阶段。当我们能够控制类液体相时，我们就可以在它完全凝固并变得不变之前改变它的性质。这为合成材料提供了一种全新的方法。最终产品可以具有定义明确的形状和大小，以及出色的机械和催化性能。这个新的研究人员奖项目将利用矿物的液态。这样做的挑战是，这种类似液体的状态只存在很少的量和非常短的时间。该项目采用了一种名为大分子拥挤(MC)的生物起源过程，这在协调许多复杂的生物事件方面至关重要。这种方法将使我们能够管理矿物的液态相更加稳定和丰富，从而使我们能够对液态矿物进行全面的定量检查，以便我们最终能够利用有用的相。有了这一倡议，我将能够解释液态在结晶过程中的作用，并最终将这些知识应用于制造新材料。由于该过程在化学上是非特定的、可扩展的和可持续的，它可以更普遍地用作一种工具来控制用于催化剂、生物医学成像以及电子和光学设备的更广泛的功能材料的合成。

More sustainable and efficient crystallisation processes will undoubtedly improve the health and prosperity of our society and future generations. We use crystallisation daily to produce medicines, cultivate crops, make food, construct buildings, and create technological devices. Furthermore, understanding the crystallisation process could help prevent biological crystallisations linked with illnesses such as Alzheimer's, kidney stones, atherosclerosis, and so on.In the traditional description of crystallisation in solution, a tiny crystal first forms and then gets larger by stacking up individual ions or molecules. However, an emerging new concept suggests that a crystal may go through a liquid-like phase before it becomes the final solid crystal. When we can control the liquid-like phase, we can alter its properties before it fully solidifies and becomes unchangeable. This offers an entirely new way to synthesise materials. The final product could then have well-defined shapes and sizes as well as outstanding mechanical and catalytic qualities.This new investigator award project will exploit the liquid-like phase of minerals. The challenge with this is that this liquid-like state exists only in minute quantities and for very short times. This project adopts a biologically originated process called macromolecular crowding (MC), which is critical in orchestrating many complicated biological events. This approach will enable us to manage the liquid-like phases of minerals to be much more stable and abundant, thus allowing us to carry out a full quantitative examination of the liquid-like mineral so that we can eventually utilise the useful phase. With this initiative, I will be able to explain the role of the liquid state in the crystallisation process and ultimately apply this knowledge to make new materials. Because the process is chemically non-specific, scalable, and sustainable, it can be used more universally as a tool to control the synthesis of a wider range of functional materials used for catalysts, biomedical imaging, and electronic and optical devices.