The Structure of Montmorillonites Modified with Zwitterionic Surfactants and Their Sorption Ability

In the past four decades, there is a growing use of surfactant modified clay complexes in wide range of applications. The mostly used surfactants to modify the swelling clay minerals are cationic surfactants, such as quaternary ammonium, which consists of two distinct moieties, a hydrophilic head, where the positive charge is concentrated, and a hydrophobic hydrocarbon chain tail. During the surface modification, this kind of surfactant molecules attach on the inner and outer surface of clay minerals, the hydrophilic surface of raw clay minerals may changed into hydrophobic surface. The changes of organophilicity and hydrophobicity of clay minerals enable them used in more wide fields, such as adsorbents for organic contaminant, geotechnical barriers, filling of nanocomposite, etc.