Abstract
The mechanics of fracture healing in calcite remain poorly constrained yet are fundamental to managing fluid transport in geothermal reservoirs and hydrocarbon systems. Here, we apply microfocused synchrotron Laue X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy to investigate subcritical crack healing in a 1 mm-thick calcite crystal subjected to controlled loading in a double-torsion device. Over a 44-hour period following load removal, we map the evolution of residual strain fields surrounding the crack tip and observe a progressive increase in compressive strain perpendicular to the crack plane accompanied by infrared spectroscopic signatures that reveal enhanced accumulation of water at the healed interface. The correlation between strain evolution and surface chemistry suggests that spontaneous crack healing in calcite is driven by dynamic anelastic relaxation coupled with irreversible fluid-mineral interactions. These findings offer insight into time-dependent crack closure processes in carbonates and highlight the role of chemically-mediated plasticity in subsurface fracture evolution.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Kai Chen and Jiawei Kou for their assistance with PYXIS. This study was part of the PhD thesis of M.C.D. at UC Berkeley. This research used beamlines 12.3.2 and 2.4 of the ALS, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231. M.C.D. was supported in part by an ALS Doctoral Fellowship in Residence as well as the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists, Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program. The SCGSR program is administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) for the DOE. ORISE is managed by ORAU under contract number DE-SC0014664. All opinions expressed in this paper are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the policies and views of DOE, ORAU, or ORISE. H.P.L., S.N., and Z.H. were supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences Division, through its Geoscience program at LBNL under Contract DEAC02-05CH11231. M.C.D. would also like to acknowledge support from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science Energy Earth-shotTM Initiative, as part of the “Center for Coupled Chemo-Mechanics of Cementitious Composites for EGS (C4M)” project at Brookhaven National Laboratory under contract number 2026-BNL-IS012-FUND, and by the Geothermal Technologies Office in the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), under the auspices of the US DOE, Washington, DC, USA, under contract no. DE-AC02-98CH 10886. H.R.W. is appreciative of support from DOE-BES (DE-FG02-05ER15637) and NSF (EAR-2154351).
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Conceptualization: M.D., H.P.L., S.N. Methodology: N.T., M.D., H.P.L., Z.H. Investigation: M.D., H.P.L., Z.H. Visualization: M.D., N.T. Supervision: H.R.W. Writing—original draft: M.D., H.P.L. Writing—review & editing: H.R.W., N.T., S.N., Z.H., H.P.L., M.D.
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Devoe, M., P. Lisabeth, H., Nakagawa, S. et al. Spontaneous crack healing in calcite reveals the influence of dynamic strain evolution and surface chemistry. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71110-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71110-x
