Flow Supercritical Synthesis Of Brucite And Magnesian T-O, T-O-T Phyllosilicates: An Opportunity To Tune The Structure With The Solvent Composition

This work presents the synthesis of minerals with a layered structure in supercritical water/ethanol mixtures to decrease the critical coordinates of the solvent regarding water. Depending on thewater/ethanol ratio of the solvent, we obtained three different minerals adopting an octahedral brucitic sheet: (1) without a Si-tetrahedral sheet (O); (2) associated with one Si-tetrahedral sheet (T-O); or (3) intercalated between two Si-tetrahedral sheets (T-O-T). We have thus shown that ethanol in a supercritical water/ethanol mixture changes the solubility of silicon with a direct consequence on the formation of the tetrahedral silicon sheets and thus makes it possible to control the structure of the synthesized layered material.