Scientists move closer to the industrial synthesis of sepiolite

The team included scientists from the universities of Madrid and Salamanca in Spain, the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and the Spanish CRG Beamline at the ESRF (SpLine), all in Grenoble (France).

According to the ESRF, no other mineral is known to absorb more water or other liquids as efficiently as sepiolite — a lightweight porous mineral used in cat litter and other applications. The reasons are its structural nanoporosity owing to tunnels in the crystals and the fact that the elongated, needle-shaped sepiolite crystals pack very loosely into a lightweight porous material.

The tiny size of these crystals has been the main obstacle to them being studied with single-crystal diffraction techniques.

For their experiment, the scientists collected samples of sepiolite fibres from 20 deposits around the world. These fibres, each made of many crystals, were first imaged with electron microscopy and then studied using X-ray powder diffraction, an analytical technique used for the phase identification of a crystalline material.