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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 May 1.
Published in final edited form as: Matrix Biol. 2016 Jan 22;52-54:43–59. doi: 10.1016/j.matbio.2016.01.007

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Physical Chemistry of Mineralization. A) Schematic illustrating how ions in solution can either form linear chains of ions, critical nucleus (the classical concept of nucleation) or unstructured (amorphous) clusters. The critical nucleus continues to accumulate ions and develops into a crystal. The clusters may also associate to form a “critical nucleus”. Proteins can interact with any of these forms to facilitate or inhibit the next step. B) The major expenditure of energy is in the formation of the critical nucleus as illustrated by this plot of activation energy vs. time.