In Situ Observation of Biotite Dissolution at pH 1 Using Advanced Optical Microscopy Cappelli, Chiara Van Driessche, Alexander E. S. Cama, Jordi Huertas Delgado, Francisco Javier Financial support was obtained from Projects CGL2008-01652 and CGL2011-22567 (Plan Nacional I+D and EU). C.C. benefitted from a FPU grant (MEC), and A.E.S.V.D. is grateful for the support by the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 project “Factoría Española de Crystalización”. Laser confocal microscopy with differential interference contrast microscopy (LCM-DIM) was used to study in situ the biotite (001) basal surface dissolution performing long-term flow-through experiments at pH 1 (T = 11.5−70 °C). Time-lapse image sequences of large areas (up to 1 mm) of the evolving cleavage (001) surface showed that dissolution only occurs at surface edges. In addition, in contrast to an observed rapid dissolution at low steps (few layers), swelling and contraction of the edge layers occurred at high steps (many layers). An increase in temperature enhanced the surface edge dissolution from 7.5 × 10−4 μm s−1 at 11.5 °C to 6.2 × 10−2 μm s−1 at 70 °C. The results obtained in this work demonstrate that LCM-DIM is a powerful technique to study in situ the dissolution mechanism and kinetics of phyllosilicates. 2026-02-18T08:22:16Z 2026-02-18T08:22:16Z 2013-05-29 journal article Cappelli, C.; Van Driessche, A. E. S.; Cama, J. y Huertas Delgado, F. J. (2013). In Situ Observation of Biotite Dissolution at pH 1 Using Advanced Optical Microscopy. Crystal Growth & Design, 13, 7, pp. 2880–2886. https://doi.org/10.1021/cg400285a 1528-7505 1528-7483 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/111150 10.1021/cg400285a eng open access American Chemical Society