Influence of habit modifiers on particle shape in a crystallization process

Abstract

For crystallization in solution, the method of changing particle shape by adding the impurities called habit modifiers has been attracted attention as a fabrication process of functional particles. The method is complicated due to many controlling parameters, such as supersaturation, concentration, kinds of impurities, etc. It needs to clarify the mechanism of crystal growth for the control of crystal shape. Therefore, the influence of impurities on crystal growth has been examined by experiments and simulations. In the experiment, the technique by differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) was used for measuring the properties of clusters with changing the habit modifiers. In adding habit modifiers, the number of clusters increased. The formation of clusters was investigated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. This simulation result agreed with the experiment result and then the formation of clusters which assembled remarkably around impurities was demonstrated by simulation.