Sepiolite is a lightweight porous mineral used in cat litter and
other applications. The extraordinary properties of this clay
make it a highly sought after mineral, despite its scarcity in
the Earth's crust: only a few mines worldwide extract it,
several of them clustered near Madrid in Spain, the world's
biggest exporter of this material. Sepiolite has been known
since Roman times when it was used to filter and purify wine,
but our understanding at the atomic scale of how these tiny
crystals absorb enormous amounts of liquid has remained elusive
until now. A team of scientists from Spain and France has
obtained for the first time single-crystal X-ray diffraction
images of sepiolite, opening the path to industrial synthesis
and further improvement of its properties. The results will be
published in the October 2011 issue of the journal American
Mineralogist. The team included scientists from the Universities
of Madrid and Salamanca in Spain, of the Institut Laue-Langevin
(ILL), the European Synchrotron Radia