Novel modification method for inorganic geopolymer by using water soluble organic polymers

The inorganic polymer, geopolymer, has emerged as promising material in various fields for its better properties with respect to ceramics and cement-based materials. This paper focused on examining the effects of five kinds of water-soluble organic polymers on the mechanical and physical properties of uncalcined-kaolinite geopolymer. It was found in the current work that the addition of polyacrylic acid (PAA) and sodium polyacrylate (PAA(Na)) can obviously improve the compressive strength (maximum: 29.0%), cross-bending strength (maximum: 64.9%) and volume weight of kaolinite Na-PS. In addition, after boiling the samples for 2 h, their weight losses and remnant compressive strength of the composite geopolymers were also improved to 7.5% and 61.2% (maximum values), respectively. On the contrary, polyacrylamide (PAm), polyethylene glycol (PEG) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) will greatly decrease the volume weight, weight loss and remnant compressive strength (except for PEG), whereas their contributions to the improvement of mechanical property were not as effective as PAA and PAA(Na). (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.