The effect of clay structures on the modification process to synthesize polymer-clay nanocomposites

Over the past decade,organoclays have been a subject of high interest within the scientific community and industry. using such materials combined with polymeric resin to synthesize polymer-clay nanocomposites (pcn) is proposed to enhance the corrosion protection performance of the resin along with the mechanical and thermal properties. clays have to be treated before being introduced to the targeted polymeric resin. the structure of clays plays a major role in determining the efficiency of the treatment process to synthesize well-functioning organoclays. in this paper,an in-depth investigation was conducted to correlate the structures of two different clays,bentonite and kaolinite,to the efficiency of the treatment process. cationic exchange reaction was used to produce organoclay for pcn synthesis. x-ray diffraction (xrd),flame photometry and scanning electron microscopy (sem) were used to identify the response of these two clays to the cationic exchange reaction. it has been concluded that such reaction is significantly effective with 1:2 layered silicate clay (bentonite) while it has not shown any effect on the 1:1 layered silicate clay (kaolinite). © 2017,university of mohammed premier oujda morocco.