Presence of oriented fibers in palygorskite powders and its influence on X-Ray diffractograms

Abstract Palygorskite is a clay mineral whose structure has not been successfully deciphered, even considering the simultaneous presence of the orthorhombic and monoclinic phases within the same sample. An interesting question, which has barely been considered until the moment to explain the difficulty of the resolution of its structure, is whether the fibrous morphology of palygorskite might enhance the presence of possibly oriented fibers which could influence some reflections in random powder diffraction experiments. To observe this influence of orientation, computer simulations considering a slight variation of the structural models proposed by Chisholm (1992) were performed. These simulations were added in different proportions to study the role that certain proportions of oriented fibers play in the resulting diffractograms. The most interesting changes are in the region of interest comprised between 4.5 and 4.0 A. Different contents in the two palygorskite phases with oriented components were also considered, affecting the resulting simulated diffractograms. The simulations were compared with experimental results, concluding that orientation can play a very important role in the diffractograms, therefore complicating even more the resolution of the structure of this mineral.