Sugar–anionic clay composite materials: intercalation of pentoses in layered double hydroxide

Abstract

The intercalation of non-ionized guest pentoses (ribose and 2-deoxyribose) into the Mg–Al and Zn–Al layered double hydroxides (LDHs) was carried out at 298 K by the calcination–rehydration reaction using the Mg–Al and Zn–Al oxide precursors calcined at 773 K. The resulting solid products reconstructed the LDH structure with incorporating pentoses, and the maximum amount of ribose intercalated by the Mg–Al oxide precursor was approximately 20 times that by the Zn–Al oxide precursor. The ribose/Mg–Al LDH was observed to have the expanded LDH structure with a broad (003) spacing of 0.85 nm. As the thickness of the LDH hydroxide basal layer is 0.48 nm, the interlayer distance of the ribose/Mg–Al LDH is 0.37 nm. This value corresponds to molecular size of ribose in thickness (0.36 nm), supporting that ribose is horizontally oriented in the interlayer space of LDH. The maximum amount of ribose intercalated by the Mg–Al oxide precursor was approximately 5 times that of 2-deoxyribose. Ribose is substituted only by the hydroxyl group at C-2 position for 2-deoxyribose. Therefore, the number of hydroxyl group of sugar is essentially important for the intercalation of sugar molecule into the LDH, suggesting that the intercalation behavior of sugar for the LDH was greatly influenced by hydrogen bond between hydroxyl group of the intercalated pentose and the LDH hydroxide basal layers.