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clay minerals

clay minerals are hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, sometimes with variable amounts of iron, magnesium, alkali metals, alkaline earths and other cations. Clay minerals are common weathering products including weathering of feldspar and low temperature hydrothermal alteration products. Clay minerals are very common in fine grained sedimentary rocks such as shale, mudstone and siltstone and in fine grained metamorphic slate and phyllite.

Clays are ultra fine grained normally considered to be less than 2 micrometres in size on standard particle size classifications and so require special analytical techniques. Standards include x-ray diffraction, electron diffraction methods, various spectroscopic methods such as Mossbauer spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, and EDS or energy dispersive spectroscopy. These methods should always augment standard polarized light microscopy, a technique which is sometimes overlooked but often where fundamental occurrences or petrologic relationships are established.

Clays are fundamentally built of tetrahedral sheets and octahedral sheets. A 1:1 clay would consist of one tetrahedral sheet and one octahedral sheet, and examples would be kaolinite and serpentine. A 2:1 clay consists of an octahedral sheet sandwiched between two tetrahedral sheets, and examples are illite, smectite, attapulgite, and chlorite although chlorite has an external octahedral sheet often referred to as "brucite".

Clay minerals include the following groups:

  • Kaolin group which includes the minerals kaolinite, dickite, halloysite and nacrite. Some sources include the serpentine group due to structural similarities Bailey 1980.
    • Smectite group which includes dioctahedral smectites such as montmorillonite and nontronite and trioctahedral smectites for example saponite.
    • Illite group which includes the clay-micas. Illite is the only common mineral.
    • Chlorite group includes a wide variety of similar minerals with considerable chemical variation.
    • Other 2:1 clay types exist such as sepiolite or attapulgite, clays with long water channels internal to their structure.

    Mixed layer clay variations exist for most of the above groups. Clay minerals in soil have an important role in bonding both nutrients and pollutants.

    Sorce: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_minerals