Journal of Physical Chemistry B, Vol.115, No.49, 14874-14877, 2011
Origin of Organism-Dependent Biogenic Silica Quartz Formation
Organism-dependent biogenic quartz formation in the steady-state environment is. a phenomenon that can address the global environmental issues' such as diagenetic evolution, biogeochemical cycling, and reservoir formation, but detailed studies have not been performed so far. Here, steady-state quartz formation is studied for amorphous silica of different biogenic origin on the basis of the recently established mechanistic model [Sato et al., J. Phys. Chem. C 2011, 115, 18131]. Amorphous silica originated from rice husks possesses angstrom scale pores larger by 1.3 angstrom than those originated from diatom algae. The slight difference of pore size dramatically reduces activation energies of water diffusion by 78% and reactions of water molecules at pore surfaces by 47%, resulting in the reduction of activation energy of biogenic quartz formation by 64%. The present findings evidence that angstrom-scale pores intrinsically residing in the amorphous matrix are the organism-dependent origin of steady-state biogenic quartz formation.