Abstract
Today there is a growing trend of using natural, biogenic or environment friendly materials to meet the ever increasing demand of the world population for their desire on high performance materials for construction, transportation, electronic and electrical appliances as well as in environmental remediation and health care products including lifesaving equipments and drugs. In this context, the natural materials, particularly the natural nanocomposites, have gained special attention also considering their traditional uses across civilizations for wastewater treatment, making health care products and packaging materials, and for their multitude of promising functional properties. In this paper, we are concerned with the structure, properties and applications of naturally occurring nanocomposite materials and their derivatives in wild, raw or unmodified state and the synthetic ones. We first start with an overview of the importance of the natural nanocomposite and their applications. We further discuss the structure and properties of some specific natural nanomaterials such as biomineralized systems taking examples of bones and shells of abalone followed by the discussions on naturally occurring clays, halloysites, and layered double hydroxides. Finally, we discuss the mechani-cal, electrical and thermal properties of nanomaterials and their derivatives while concluding the discussion with the uses of the composites in various areas such as packaging, coatings and other high-performance applications in aerospace engineering, environmental remediation and health care industry (designing drug delivery systems, tissue engineering etc).
Keywords: Clay, Environment, Health, Mechanical properties, Nanocomposite.
View PDF