Thermochemistry of strontium incorporation in aragonite from atomistic simulations

We have investigated the thermodynamics of mixing between aragonite (orthorhombic CaCO3) and strontianite (SrCO3). In agreement with experiment, our simulations predict that there is a miscibility gap between the two solids at ambient conditions. All SrxCa1−xCO3 solids with compositions 0.12 < x < 0.87 are metastable with respect to separation into a Ca-rich and a Sr-rich phase. The concentration of Sr in coral aragonites (x ∼ 0.01) lies in the miscibility region of the phase diagram, and therefore formation of separated Sr-rich phases in coral aragonites is not thermodynamically favorable. The miscibility gap disappears at around 380 K. The enthalpy of mixing, which is positive and nearly symmetric with respect to x = 0.5, is the dominant contribution to the excess free energy, while the vibrational and configurational entropic contributions are small and of opposite sign. We provide a detailed comparison of our simulation results with available experimental data.