The intercalation of cetyltrimethylammonium cations into muscovite by a two-step process: II. The intercalation of cetyltrimethylammonium cations into Li-muscovite

The alkylammonium cations were successively intercalated into the interlayer of muscovite. It was achieved by inorganic–organic ion exchange in the hydrothermal reaction of the LiNO3-treated muscovite with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide solution. One-dimensional Patterson plots and electron density calculations show that hydrated Li+ and CTA+ cations entered the interlayer of muscovite successively. The CTA+-intercalated muscovite was characterized by powder X-ray diffraction and elemental analysis, in conjunction with FTIR, nuclear magnetic resonance, X-ray photoelectron spectra, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, etc. The experiments show that organo-muscovite composite with ordered structure has been obtained. The CTA+ headgroups are distributed in the interlayer uniformly. However, the arrangement and conformation of CTA+ chains are strongly dependent upon the reaction temperature. At lower reaction temperature, the chains of CTA+ ions adopt a little more disordered arrangement and have higher gauche/trans conformer ratio, resulting in the disturbance to the interlayer symmetry. Whereas at higher reaction temperature, the sample with paraffin-like arrangement of CTA+ chains could be obtained, in which the methylene chains of CTA+ adopt a fully stretched, all-trans conformation.