Abstract
Abstract Electron-beam microscopic methods, including scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electron diffraction (ED) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), are indispensable ones for the characterisation of halloysite to understand its morphology and crystal structure. Tubular morphologies of halloysite are classified into two types, ‘cylindrical’ and ‘prismatic or polygonal’, from the observation of high-resolution SEM. ED has been traditionally used to investigate the crystal structure of halloysite, but its interpretation was inconclusive. Direct observation of the crystal structure or layer-stacking feature of halloysite using HRTEM had been desired, but not successful due to rapid degradation by electron radiation. However, recent HRTEM studies that overcame this problem revealed that halloysite does not adopt a two-layer structure, as suggested from previous ED work. Instead, a heavily disordered stacking model with two kinds of layer displacement revealed by the HRTEM images of a prismatic halloysite could reproduce its ED and X-ray diffraction pattern.
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