| Autor: |
Mohammad Shoaib, Shaihroz Khan, Omar B. Wani, Jitendra Mata, Anthony J. Krzysko, Ivan Kuzmenko, Markus Bleuel, Lindsey K. Fiddes, Eric W. Roth, Erin R. Bobicki |
| Jazyk: |
angličtina |
| Rok vydání: |
2023 |
| Předmět: |
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| Zdroj: |
Communications Materials, Vol 4, Iss 1, Pp 1-11 (2023) |
| Druh dokumentu: |
article |
| ISSN: |
2662-4443 |
| DOI: |
10.1038/s43246-023-00414-y |
| Popis: |
Abstract Aqueous suspensions of swelling clays display a nematic sol-gel transition at very low solid concentrations. The underlying microstructure of the gel has remained a point of contention since the time of Irving Langmuir and has been a major obstacle to fully realizing the potential of clays for practical applications. Here, we comprehensively probe the microstructure of a smectite clay suspension using ultra-small angle neutron/X-ray scattering and find that the nematic gel is structurally ordered and contains entities that are at least an order of magnitude larger than the individual particles. Complementary cryo-electron microscopy shows the presence of domains having particle-particle ordering responsible for nematic texture and regions of particle-particle aggregation responsible for gel-like behavior. We find that the smectic clay gels have a hybrid microstructure with co-existing repulsive nematic domains and attractive disordered domains. |
| Databáze: |
Directory of Open Access Journals |
| Externí odkaz: |
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