Large-Scale Production of Rectorite Nanosheets and Their Co-Assembly with Aramid Nanofibers for High-Performance Electrical Insulating Nanopapers.

Compared with raw rectorite microplatelets (RMs), rectorite nanosheets (RNs) have considerably greater application prospects in the preparation of advanced composite materials because of their larger aspect ratio, higher surface reactivity, and intrinsically superior mechanical and physical properties. However, the difficulty in the efficient preparation of RNs significantly limits their large-scale applications. Here, a scalable poly(vinylpyrrolidone)-assisted stirring approach is developed to prepare ultrathin RNs from the abundant natural RMs.