Abstract The properties of clay slurries (porosity ~ 0.75) impact a wide range of materials such as commercial clay dispersions and sedimentary deposits. Their material behavior, and in particular the gelation of clay slurries, is thought to be governed by clay particle interactions. In the literature, such interactions are rarely directly probed, but rather inferred from structures observed by cryo-electron microscopy. For example, the honeycomb structure is a widely accepted textbook model that is used to rationalize the observed behavior of clay slurries. Using high-pressure freezing, cryo-electron microscopy, and cryo-synchrotron wide-angle X-ray scattering, this study shows that the honeycomb-structure is an artifact of sample preparation. When samples are high-pressure frozen, individual clay particles and aggregates of particles arrange in a random orientation rather than the closed-cell structure dominated by face-face and face-edge contacts observed in plunge frozen samples. These results substantially contribute to the understanding of the gelation mechanism and particle interactions in colloidal clay slurries, and provide valuable input parameters for meso-scale modeling efforts of clay dispersions and sedimentary deposits to upscale their mechanical properties to the macroscale.

中文翻译：

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粘土泥浆中的颗粒排列：反对蜂窝结构的案例

摘要 粘土泥浆的性质（孔隙度 ~ 0.75）影响范围广泛的材料，例如商业粘土分散体和沉积物。它们的材料行为，特别是粘土泥浆的凝胶化，被认为是由粘土颗粒相互作用控制的。在文献中，这种相互作用很少被直接探测，而是从冷冻电子显微镜观察到的结构中推断出来的。例如，蜂窝结构是一种被广泛接受的教科书模型，用于对观察到的粘土泥浆行为进行合理化。使用高压冷冻、低温电子显微镜和低温同步加速器广角 X 射线散射，这项研究表明蜂窝结构是样品制备的人工制品。当样品被高压冷冻时，单个粘土颗粒和颗粒聚集体以随机方向排列，而不是在冷冻样品中观察到的由面-面和面-边缘接触主导的闭孔结构。这些结果极大地有助于了解胶体粘土泥浆中的胶凝机制和颗粒相互作用，并为粘土分散体和沉积沉积物的中尺度建模工作提供有价值的输入参数，以将其机械性能提升到宏观尺度。