Infrared investigation of organo-montmorillonites prepared from different surfactants

In this paper, a series of organoclays were prepared from montmorillonites with different CEC and surfactants with different alkyl chain numbers and chain length. Then, FTIR spectroscopy using ATR, DRIFT and KBr pressed disk techniques was used to characterize the local environments of surfactant and host clays in various surfactants modified montmorillonites under wet and dry states. The present study demonstrates that the alkyl chain length and chain number have significant influences on the local environment of the intercalated surfactants. Also, this study indicates that the surface property of the resulting organoclays is affected by the loading and configuration of the intercalated surfactants. In wet state, more gauche conformers are introduced into the alkyl chains in the organoclays with low surfactant loading, evidenced by the shift of CH(2) vibration to higher frequency. Meanwhile, in the case of the organo-montmorillonites with high surfactant loading, the interaction between the surfactant and silicate surface results in a re-arrangement of SiO(4) tetrahedral sheets and a splitting of Si-O stretching vibration. The KBr pressed disk technique is suitable to probe the conformational ordering of the confined amine chains and the reflectance spectroscopy with ATR and/or DRIFT technique is more suitable to probe the water in organoclays. These findings are of high importance to the preparation of organoclays with proper surfactants and investigation of the microstructure of the resulting organoclays using suitable techniques.