Clay Nanopowders List
From the definition of mineralogy, clay refers to the general term of layered silicate containing water. Clay nanopowders are a type of layered nanoparticles with a particle size between 1-100nm. Clay nanopowders is a very important type of mineral material in materials science. It has a unique nano-in-situ generation structure and excellent performance. It provides a natural nano-structured composite basis for preparing nano-sized composite materials.
Figure 1. The structure of polymer/clay nanocomposites.
Applications:
- Polymer/clay nanocomposites: The most researched application of clay nanoparticles is polymer/clay nanocomposites. PA6(Polyamide 6) /clay nanocomposite materials can be used in automobile timer covers and are widely used in automobile manufacturing. At present, the types of polymers raw materials involved are polyamide, polyethylene, polypropylene, polyester, epoxy resin, polyurethane, phenolic resin, rubber, etc.
- Antibacterial materials: Organic-inorganic composite antibacterial agents have both the high efficiency and sustainability of organic antibacterial agents and the safety and heat resistance of inorganic antibacterial agents. The interlayer insertion technology is used to introduce organic antibacterial agents into the interlayer gaps of silver ion-exchanged layered clays. This silicate has a high enough heat - resistant temperature to allow silver ions to be inserted without affecting the layer spacing. When used at high temperatures, anionic and organic antibacterial agents can be slowly released together to obtain a comprehensive antibacterial and antifungal effect.
- Energy storage materials: Palygorskite and Pingshi are clay nanopowders with structural nanopores, which can be distributed on one-dimensional or multi-dimensional scales. The composite material can be prepared by the intercalation method, which can have good adsorption performance for hydrogen.
- Medicine: The clay nanopowders montmorillonite has an unsaturated negative charge and strong cation exchange ability, which has an absolute adsorption and fixation effect on viruses and bacteria entering the human body. When nano-level montmorillonite enters the human body, it covers the inner layer of the digestive mucosa of the lung tract, which can prevent harmful virus and bacteria from combining with mucus into the blood through the intestinal tract, thereby playing a inhibitory role. Nano-montmorillonite powder has good adsorption effect on Escherichia coli, Vibrio cholerae, Campylobacter jejuni, Staphylococcus aureus, rotavirus and bile salt, and has fixative effect on bacterial toxin. In addition, the nano-montmorillonite powder is matched with a certain Chinese medicine powder in proportion, and it has a miraculous effect in treating burns. It can be seen that clay nanopowders has very broad application prospects in the field of medicine.
- Catalysis and environmental protection: Due to its high surface area and stable pore structure, clay nanopowders has broad application prospects in petrochemical, environmental protection and other fields. Due to the wide variety of clay minerals and the tunability of clay nanopowders, the pore size, solid acid strength and adsorption characteristics of these materials can be controlled artificially, so they can be prepared according to different uses. Macroporous chromium-containing porous materials have good dehydrogenation catalytic activity and can be used in the dehydrogenation reaction of some dehydrogenation compounds; porous materials containing transition elements have strong hydrogenation degradation activity for long-chain alkanes and dicycloalkanes, and can be used as sewage treatment agents for environmental engineering.
References
- Biqiong Chen, Julian R. G. Evans, H. Christopher Greenwell, Pascal Boulet, Peter V. Coveney, Allen A. Bowden and Andrew Whiting. A critical appraisal of polymer–clay nanocomposites. Chem. Soc. Rev., 2008, 37, 568–594.
- Bhabananda Biswas, Laurence N. Warr, Emily F. Hilder, Nirmal Goswami, Mohammad M. Rahman, Jock G. Churchman, Krasimir Vasilev, Gang Pan and Ravi Naidu. Biocompatible functionalisation of nanoclays for improved environmental remediation. Chem. Soc. Rev., 2019, 48, 3740--3770.
