Chemical intercalation-exfoliation

Kaschak, D.M., Jhonson, S.A., Hooks, D.E., Kim, H.-N., Ward, M.D. and Mallouk, T.E. (1998) Chemistry on the edge A microscopic analysis of the intercalation exfoliation, edge functionalization and monolayer surface tiling reactions of alpha-zirconium phosphate. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 120, 10887-10894. 

FIGURE 1.8 Different ways to unzip CNTs for production of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) (a) Intercalation exfoliation (b) chemical oxidation (c) catalytic approach (d) the electrical method and (f) selective etching by Ar plasma. (From Nano Today, 5, Terrones, M. et al., 351, Copyright 2010, with permission from Elsevier.)... 

Clay minerals or phyllosilicates are lamellar natural and synthetic materials with high surface area, cation exchange and swelling properties, exfoliation ability, variable surface charge density and hydrophobic/hydrophilic character [85], They are good host structures for intercalation or adsorption of organic molecules and macromolecules, particularly proteins. On the basis of the natural adsorption of proteins by clay minerals and various clay complexes that occurs in soils, many authors have investigated the use of clay and clay-derived materials as matrices for the immobilization of enzymes, either for environmental chemistry purpose or in the chemical and material industries. 

Examples of the synthesis of polysiloxane nanocomposites reported in the literature include Work by Ma et al (6) who modified montmorilIonite with short segments of PDMS and blended this into a polymer melt/solution to yield examples of fully exfoliated or intercalated PDMS/clay nanocomposites. Pan, Mark et al (7) synthesized well defined nano-fillers by reacting groups of four vinyl terminated POSS cages with a central siloxane core. These materials were subsequently chemically bonded into a PDMS network yielding a significant improvement in the mechanical properties of the polymer. 

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