The precipitation of barium or strontium carbonates in alkaline silica-rich environments leads to crystalline aggregates that have been named silica/carbonate biomorphs because their morphology resembles that of primitive organisms. These aggregates are self-assembled materials of purely inorganic origin, with an amorphous phase of silica intimately intertwined with a carbonate nanocrystalline phase. We propose a mechanism that explains all the morphologies described for biomorphs. Chemically coupled coprecipitation of carbonate and silica leads to fibrillation of the growing front and to laminar structures that experience curling at their growing rim. These curls propagate in a surflike way along the rim of the laminae. We show that all observed morphologies with smoothly varying positive or negative Gaussian curvatures can be explained by the combined growth of counterpropagating curls and growing laminae.

Calcium sulfate minerals such as gypsum play important roles in natural and industrial processes, but their precipitation mechanisms remain largely unexplored. We used time-resolved sample quenching and high-resolution microscopy to demonstrate that gypsum forms via a three-stage process: (i) homogeneous precipitation of nanocrystalline hemihydrate bassanite below its predicted solubility, (ii) self-assembly of bassanite into elongated aggregates co-oriented along their c axis, and (iii) transformation into dihydrate gypsum. These findings indicate that a stable nanocrystalline precursor phase can form below its bulk solubility and that in the CaSO(4) system, the self-assembly of nanoparticles plays a crucial role. Understanding why bassanite forms prior to gypsum can lead to more efficient anti-scaling strategies for water desalination and may help to explain the persistence of CaSO(4) phases in regions of low water activity on Mars.