Particles with nanometer dimensions (nanoparticles) are all around us. The finest particles of sand are blown by the wind over thousands of kilometers. The finest particles of soils are either eroded by the wind in extremely dry conditions or by water under wet conditions and deposited hundreds of kilometers or more from the origin. The air contains nanoparticles of carbon, ice, and oxides and ...

X-ray analyses of the clay minerals from thousands of sediments indicate that any of the major clay minerals can occur in abundance in any of the major depositional environments and there is no consistent coincidence between specific clay minerals and specific depositional environments. It is concluded that the great majority of clay minerals in sedimentary rocks are detrital in origin, strongl...

Adsorption of organic cations on several clay minerals is reviewed with an emphasis on the effect of ionic strength and modeling. The clay exchanged with suitable organic cations forms a basis for ecologically acceptable formulations of herbicides with reduced leaching, ground water contamination and enhanced weed control efficacy. Incomplete neutralization of the clay surface charge by an orga...

" A supplement of 1% to 4% clay or 4% salt mixture caused an increase in body weight and prevented the pathologic changes. " " Findings indicated that the various clays differed significantly in growth-promoting activity (Table 4). The most active material tested was clay sample A (ION-MIN from CEM); whereas, clay sample J, kaolin, and hydrobiotite were virtually devoid of growth-promoting acti...

Focus here is placed on the pharmaceutical and biomedical applications of novel clay-drug hybrid materials categorized by methods of administration. Clay minerals have been used for many years as pharmaceutical and medicinal ingredients for therapeutic purposes. A number of studies have attempted to explore clay-drug hybrid materials for biomedical applications with desired functions, such as s...

Second harmonic generation (SHG) is applied for the first time to study the surfaces of clay particles. An SHG signal was detected from an aqueous suspension of disk-shaped montmorillonite clay particles of 0.5 μm diameter and 0.01 μm thickness. The origin of the SHG signal is the polarization of water molecules by surface charges located in the edge region of the clay particles. On addition of...

Abstract The crawling process of snakes is known to have fascinating tribological phenomena, whereas investigations on their frictional properties depending patterned cuticles are insufficient. In this study, we designed and fabricated biomimetic microstructures inspired by the geometric microunits Achalinus spinalis cuticle using polyurethane acrylate (PUA) material performed its analysis. mic...

Refractory clay tiles are composed of kaolin, which is the commercial name of clay, and this consists mainly of kaolinite mineral. Two such tiles and caowool packed in glass columns were used for the immobilization of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans cells in a ferrous iron medium, which was percolated through the supports. Colonization was carried out by several media replacements with no furthe...

-Diffuse Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy was used to monitor both molecular interactions and concentrations of volatile organic chemicals adsorbed on a commercial montmorillonite. Chemicals tested included propanoic acid, hexanal, heptanal, trimethylamine, dimethylsulfide and dimethyldisulfide. Diffuse Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy had several advantage...

Little attention has been paid to the environmental fate of the hormones 17beta-estradiol and testosterone excreted in animal waste. Land application of manure has a considerable potential to affect the environment with these endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs). Composting is known to decompose organic matter to a stable, humus-like material. The goal of the present study was to quantitativel...