ABSTRACT
Each single crystal of a solid sample in contact with water may develop a very complex interfacial geometry, and the rates of dissolution are profoundly affected by this geometry. The problem of the micromorphology of crystals has been best analyzed for the case of crystal growth, and it is instructive to give a general account of the basic ideas. The formalism to describe crystal growth is heavily based on an ideally simple crystal, the Kossel crystal, composed of cubic growth units. The principle of microscopic reversibility requires that, at equilibrium, the sequence of steps leading to dissolution be the exact reverse of the sequence of steps leading to crystal growth. The analysis of the complex time evolution of the boundaries of a dissolving crystal is the subject of the theories of crystal etching. A thorough description of the kinetics of dissolution implies a knowledge of the function describing the spatial coordinates of all surface points as a function of time.
