text: Like all phyllosilicates, clay minerals are characterised by two-dimensional sheets of corner-sharing  tetrahedra or  octahedra. The sheet units have the chemical composition . Each silica tetrahedron shares three of its vertex oxygen ions with other tetrahedra, forming a hexagonal array in two dimensions. The fourth oxygen ion is not shared with another tetrahedron and all of the tetrahedra "point" in the same direction; i.e. all of the unshared oxygen ions are on the same side of the sheet. These unshared oxygen ions are called apical oxygen ions.
  In clays, the tetrahedral sheets are always bonded to octahedral sheets formed from small cations, such as aluminum or magnesium, and coordinated by six oxygen atoms. The unshared vertex from the tetrahedral sheet also forms part of one side of the octahedral sheet, but an additional oxygen atom is located above the gap in the tetrahedral sheet at the center of the six tetrahedra. This oxygen atom is bonded to a hydrogen atom forming an OH group in the clay structure. Clays can be categorized depending on the way that tetrahedral and octahedral sheets are packaged into layers. If there is only one tetrahedral and one octahedral group in each layer the clay is known as a 1:1 clay. The alternative, known as a 2:1 clay, has two tetrahedral sheets with the unshared vertex of each sheet pointing towards each other and forming each side of the octahedral sheet.
  Bonding between the tetrahedral and octahedral sheets requires that the tetrahedral sheet becomes corrugated or twisted, causing ditrigonal distortion to the hexagonal array, and the octahedral sheet is flattened.  This minimizes the overall bond-valence distortions of the crystallite.
  Depending on the composition of the tetrahedral and octahedral sheets, the layer will have no charge or will have a net negative charge. If the layers are charged this charge is balanced by interlayer cations such as Na or K or by a lone octahedral sheet. The interlayer may also contain water. The crystal structure is formed from a stack of layers interspaced with the interlayers.