Clay/polymer composites: the story

Clay/polymer nanocomposites offer tremendous improvement in a wide range of physical and engineering properties for polymers with low filler loading. This technology can now be applied commercially and has received great attention in recent years. The major development in this field has been carried out over the last one and half decades. The progress, advantages, limitations, and current problems will be discussed in this review. So far, significant progress has been made in the development of synthetic methods, application to engineering polymers, and the investigation of major engineering properties. However, we are far from the end of the tunnel in terms of understanding the mechanisms of the enhancement effect in nanocomposites.