Characterization of Nanostructure Sedimentary Clay Material of Netrokona District

Clay is an essential industrial mineral that often needs improvement for applications. Due to the vast demand in the ceramic industry, nanostructure clay materials can be modified to use as advanced materials such as porous filtration, heat resistance insulators, and other applications. The excellent alternating layered crystal sheet structure of clay minerals allows for comprehensively modifying its properties. In this research, local clay was chosen as potential material and its properties are thoroughly investigated. Chemical composition analysis by X-ray fluorescence revealed that the clay contains Al2O3 (26.67 %) and SiO2 (66.32 %) as major oxides and impurity oxides include mainly Fe2O3 (2.01%) and TiO2 (2.47 %) with the acceptable amount. A mineralogical study employing X-ray diffraction (XRD) exhibited mainly kaolinite and quartz phases with minor contents of illite and rutile phases. Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM) displayed the morphological features of clay mineral structure. The particle size of kaolinite platelets varied from < 2 μm. In addition, the particle shape of clay structure was also discerned with size spans of 50−500 nm. EDX analysis also gives the elemental analysis of the nanostructure sheet. The local sedimentary clay resembled white clay-type characteristics though XRD contradicts the well-crystalline structure of kaolinite. Differential thermal analysis (DSC-TG) confirmed phase transition occurs with increasing temperature. The obtained results from various characterization techniques provide an in-depth understanding of its fundamental characteristics to suit it for applications.