Liquid–crystalline properties of aqueous suspensions of natural clay nanosheets

@article{Paineau2013LiquidcrystallinePO,
  title={Liquid–crystalline properties of aqueous suspensions of natural clay nanosheets},
  author={Erwan Paineau and Adrian Marie Philippe and Krassimira Antonova and Isabelle Bihannic and Patrick Davidson and Ivan Dozov and Jean-Christophe P. Gabriel and Marianne Imp{\'e}ror-Clerc and Pierre Levitz and Florian Meneau and Laurent J. Michot},
  journal={Liquid Crystals Reviews},
  year={2013},
  volume={1},
  pages={110 - 126},
  url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:136533412}
}
Clay minerals, like beidellite or nontronite, spontaneously exfoliate in water and form colloidal suspensions of nanosheets. In a given range of concentration, these suspensions display a nematic liquid–crystalline phase whose structure and properties can be conveniently studied in detail by polarized-light microscopy and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). Moreover, in situ SAXS investigations of sheared clay suspensions provide information about their flow properties, both in the isotropic… 
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Effect of electrolytes on the microstructure and yielding of aqueous dispersions of colloidal clay.

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