Morphological evaluation of variously intercalated pre-baked clay

The use of porous materials is enjoying tremendous popularity and attention of the advance scientific communities due to their excellent adsorptive and catalytic activities. Clays are one of the most important candidates in the porous community which shows the above mentioned activities after modifing with a different intercalating agent. The paper is focused on the infiuence of some inorganic intercalating agents (NaOH) on the morphology of the variously intercalated clay samples. The alkali metal was used as the inorganic intercalating agent. The effect of intercalation temperature, intercalation agent concentration and intercalation time on the pre-baked clay morphology were also part of the study. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) study was performed to evaluate the morphological changes of the resultant intercalates. Different morphological properties were improved significantly in the case of the inorganically modified clay samples. Thus, such intercalations are suggested to be effective if the clays under study are to be used for different industrial process at elevated conditions.