Clay nanolayer encapsulation, evolving from origins of life to future technologies
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https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2020-000131-1
THE EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL SPECIAL TOPICS
Review
Clay nanolayer encapsulation, evolving from origins of life to future technologies Jon Otto Fossuma Laboratory for Soft and Complex Matter Studies, Department of Physics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology – NTNU, Trondheim, Norway Received 17 June 2020 / Accepted 6 August 2020 Published online 16 November 2020 Abstract. Clays are the siblings of graphite and graphene/grapheneoxide. There are two basic ways of using clays for encapsulation of sub-micron entities such as molecules, droplets, or nanoparticles, which is either by encapsulation in the interlayer space of clay nanolayered stacked particles (“the graphite way”), or by using exfoliated clay nanolayers to wrap entities in packages (“the graphene way”). Clays maybe the prerequisites for life on earth and can also be linked to the natural formation of other two-dimensional materials such as naturally occurring graphite and its allotropes. Here we discuss state-of-the-art in the area of clay-based encapsulation and point to some future scientific directions and technological possibilities that could emerge from research in this area.
The seminal research on graphene by Geim and Novoselov1 [1] established great hopes in two-dimensional materials as for instance reflected in the Graphene Flagship project [2] – a e1 billion initiative of the European Commission – funding 150 or so, organizations. This flagship has brought graphene production up to commercial levels, with applications in electronics, photonics, sensors, composite and coating materials, energy, flexibles and wearables, aeronautics and space, all the way to biotechnological use (the latter however, with notable safety concerns [3]). The history of graphite science prior to 2004 was reviewed by Geim [4]. Singleatom-thick crystallites of graphite, i.e. graphene, are usually exfoliated [1,2,4] from bulk graphite. Allotropes of graphite [5] include graphene, carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, diamond, and carbon cones [6] (Fig. 1). Naturally occurring bulk graphite on earth originates from carbon rich deposits that may once have been coal, peat or oil. The natural formation of graphite is due to heat and pressure alteration (metamorphisms) of these deposits occurring in rocks close to hot igneous intrusions, i.e. intrusions that form when magma cools and solidifies before it reaches the surface [7]. There are several classes of natural graphite formed in this way, such as crystalline flake graphite, amorphous graphite or lump graphite, where natural crystalline flakes are the most mined and used for industrial purposes, in addition to synthetically a
e-mail: [email protected] Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both of the University of Manchester in England, shared the 2010 Nobel prize of Physics for Their Work Producing and Characterizing Graphene. 1
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The European Physical Journal Special Topics
Fig. 1. Copied from reference [5]: Carbon allotropes.
Fig. 2. Adopted from Supplementary I
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