Clays hydrogen bonding

Two types of swelling may occur. Surface hydration is one type of swelling in which water molecules are adsorbed on crystal surfaces. Hydrogen bonding holds a layer of water molecules to the oxygen atoms exposed on the crystal surfaces. Subsequent layers of water molecules align to form a quasi-crystalline structure between unit layers which results in an increased c-spacing. All types of clays swell in this manner. 

Clays consist of parallel silicate layers in kaolinite, two unsymmetrical types of layers are linked by hydrogen bonds. One consists of aluminium ions and hydroxyl groups, the other of silicon and oxygen ions. Cairns-Smith does not postulate a detailed mechanism, but only describes the main thrust of his argument. Critics complain that clear experimental results are not available (however, other proponents of new hypotheses often provide no evidence to back up their suggestions ). 

In addition, the relative insignificance of the hydrogen bond between a clay surface and an OH group of an adsorbed molecule has been demonstrated by IR spectroscopy (2 ). 

Since adsorption at a mineral surface is a replacement process, we would expect mineral surfaces with weak affinity for water to have the strongest affinity for hydrophobic solutes. Infrared spectroscopy shows that siloxane surfaces on clays with little isomorphic substitution form weaker hydrogen bonds than water forms with itself (64), which corresponds to one of the definitions of a hydrophobic surface offered by Texter et al. (65) Therefore,... 

Alcohols are hydroxylated alkyl-compounds (R-OH) which are neutral in reaction due to their unionizable (OH) group (e.g., methanol, ethanol, isopropanol, and w-butanol). The hydroxyl of alcohols can displace water molecules in the primary hydration shell of cations adsorbed onto soil-solid and sediment-solid clay particles. The water molecule displacement depends mainly on the polarizing power of the cation. The other adsorption mechanisms of alcohol hydroxyl groups are through hydrogen bonding and cation-dipole interactions [19,65],... 

The carboxyl group (-COOH) of organic acids interacts either directly with the interlayer cation or by forming a hydrogen bond with the water molecules coordinated to the exchangeable cation on the soil-solid and sediment-solid clay... 

The ideal layered silicate is the mineral montmorrillonite, which is main component of the clay bentonite (fig 6). Montmorrillonite is a so called 2 1 layered silicate. Each layer consists of two sheets of silica tetrahedrae which are sandwiched by an alumina octahedrae sheet. The layers are only weakly bound, often by hydrogen bonding from water. The structure has been extensively studied by transmission electron diffraction especially by Z5wagin and coworkers [4]. 

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