Abstract:
Nanocomposite material which contains inorganic nanolayer clay and
organic polymer has attracted considerable attention in recent years.
Particularly, intercalation of organic polymer into inorganic layered host
iii
lattice has approved to be an effective way to construct inorganic–organic
nanosystem. The Raman and FTIR spectra of kaolinite (layers of silicate
with composition A12Si2O5(OH)4, having a diameter of 5–10 m ) were
reported. Kaolinite was treated by adding dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) as an
aqueous system to expand the interlayer basal spacing. The basal spacing
was increased from 7.15 to 11.2 Angstrom. This increase in basal spacing
was measured using X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) methed. In the OH
stretching region, a Raman band of kaolinite was observed at 3624 cm 1 , and
at 3481 cm 1 after being modified. The IR spectra of kaolinite show four and
five bands for OH stretching respectively before and after modification. The
organic molecules-modified kaolinite (Kaolinite+DMSO) was then used as
clay precursor to synthesize the polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA)/kaolinite
intercalation nanocomposites via solution intercalation. This study has
covered eight nanocomposites samples classified into two sets, the first of
which contains four samples with different ratios of
(kaolinite+DMSO)/PMMA while the other contain PMMA and pristine
kaolinite. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) was also used to
characterize the samples.
