Inherent Acidity of Aqua Metal Ions in Solids: An Assay in Layered Aluminosilicates

Swelling layered minerals applications: A solid state NMR overview

Swelling layered clay minerals form an important sub-group of the phyllosilicate family. They are characterized by their ability to expand or contract in the presence or absence of water. This property makes them useful for a variety of applications, ranging from environmental technologies to heterogeneous catalysis, and including pharmaceutical and industrial applications. Solid State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (SS-NMR) has been extensively applied in the characterization of these materials, providing useful information on their dynamics and structure that is inaccessible using other characterization methods such as X-ray diffraction. In this review, we present the key contributions of SS-NMR to the understanding of the mechanisms that govern some of the main applications associated to swelling clay minerals. The article is divided in two parts. The first part presents SS-NMR conventional applications to layered clay minerals, while the second part comprises an in-depth review of the information that SS-NMR can provide about the different properties of swelling layered clay minerals.

Effect of magnetic particles on NMR spectra of Murchison meteorite organic matter and a polymer-based model system

Organic matter from the Murchison meteorite shows pronounced spinning sidebands of the (1)H MAS NMR spectrum and exhibits a large bulk magnetization of 0.75emicro/g extrapolated to 94kOe at 300K. By comparison with data of diamagnetic polystyrene and laponite clay mixed with ferrimagnetic gamma-Fe(2)O(3) nano-particles, we show that the spinning sidebands arise from a combination of dipolar couplings of a given (1)H to magnetic particles, seen in a backscattered-electron image, and to other protons. Signal loss and significant broadening of protonated-carbon peaks in (13)C MAS NMR spectra of polystyrene with Fe(2)O(3) nano-particles is demonstrated, and implications for (13)C NMR spectroscopy of Murchison meteorite are discussed.