Full Paper of the communication presented at IUPAC Symposium on Long-Term Properties of Polymers and Polymeric Materials, Stockholm 1976, Topic III.
Solid-Phase Synthesis of a Mineral Blockpolymer by Low Temperature Polycondensation
of Alumino-Silicate Polymers: Na-poly(sialate) or Na-PS and Characteristics .
Joseph DAVIDOVITS
INTRODUCTION
The work exposed here comes from an attempt to transfer our knowledge of organic polymers and the technologies associated with it to the yet unknown, or hardly known field of the synthesis and transformation of inorganic polymers, in order to develop new materials and new industrial processes. It is a matter of fact that inorganic materials like glass, ceramics, bricks, concrete, and most natural rocks by far outclass organic polymers with respect to their resistance to high temperature. This study provides an answer to the following question: Could we take mineral materials such as clay, kaolinite, that is to say aluminosilicate polymers, and transform them using the extreme low-temperature polymerisation technology of organic polymers ?”.The answer is : yes, we can. The resulting products have similar characteristics to natural rock‑forming minerals, such as zeolites, feldspathoids and feldspars. These different minerals are usually called silicates or aluminosilicates in the same way as kaolinite, clays, micas, mullite, andalusite, spinel, etc. that is in brief all the minerals whose empirical formula contains Si, AI, O, and any other elements such as H, Na, K, Ca, Mg, etc. For the development of our knowledge and for a better understanding of the mechanism of this new synthesis of inorganic polymers, we felt we had to introduce a more precise terminology.
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