Facile synthesis of exfoliated vermiculite nanosheets as a thermal stabilizer in polyvinyl chloride resin.

Well-defined vermiculite (VMT) nanosheets have been exfoliated from mineral VMT by a water-assisted anion-exchange approach. The resultant VMT nanosheets are utilized as a thermal stabilizer in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) to resist dehydrochlorination of PVC. As expected, the color-blackening onset of PVC is delayed after incorporating VMT nanosheets, and the thermal stability improves with reducing the particle size of the VMT nanosheets.