Preparation of the Novel Nanocomposite Biurea/Montmorillonite via In Situ Synthesis

Abstract

Using the urea intercalated montmorillonite (Urea/MMT) as the precursor, a novel nanocomposite biurea intercalated montmorillonite (Biurea/MMT) was prepared via the in-situ synthesis process through the introduction of hydrazine hydrate (HY). The resulted nanocomposites were characterized by using techniques such as XRD, FTIR, solid state NMR as well as thermal analyses, etc. The influence of the concentration of the HY on the products was also investigated. The XRD results showed the variation of the interlayer spacing of MMT from 1.51 nm to 1.71 nm for Urea/MMT. When the concentration of HY was low, the substitution of urea by HY was taken place which resulted in the decrease of the interlayer distance to 1.27nm. When the concentration increased to greater than 40%, the new phase with basal spacing of 1.75 nm was dominated. It indicated that a novel nanocomposite was synthesized in-situ. The solid state NMR results confirmed the in-situ formation of Biurea/MMT in which the chemical shifts of13C and15N of the intercalated biurea were slightly different from the bulk biurea. The intercalated biurea decomposed easily than those bulk powders due to the highly dispersion in the interlayer space of MMT.