Interlamellar Silylation of pristine montmorillonite with 3-Aminopropyltrimethoxysilane and vinyltriethoxysilane

Montmorillonite (MMT) as a layered silicate nanoclay with lamellar structure has attracted intensive research interests recently for the preparation of polymer/clay nanocomposites.[1] The presence of the different cations, i.e., Na+ make the pristine structure highly polar, and this, in turn, leads thissilicate to be incompatible with the vast majority of polymers. In recent years, the chemical modifications of silicate layered materials have found increasing interests. The presence ofbroken bonds on the platelet edges are common for layered silicates, and leads to the formation of hydroxyl groups, whichcan be utilized for chemical modification by silylation reaction.This modification increases the interlayer spacing andcreates a more favorable organophilic environment. [2] In this work, the silylation of sodium montmorillonite (Na- MMT) was performed in ethanol/ water media using 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane and vinyltriethoxysilane. The variation of the d-spacing of sodium montmorillonite (Na- MMT) upon reaction with two silanes was studied in details.