Absolute acidity of clay edge sites from ab-initio simulations

International audience; We provide a microscopic understanding of the solvation structure and reactivity of the edges of neutral clays. In particular we address the tendency to deprotonation of the different reactive groups on the (0 1 0) face of pyrophyllite. Such information cannot be inferred directly from titration experiments, which do not discriminate between different sites and whose interpretation resorts to macroscopic models. The determination of the corresponding pKa then usually relies on bond valence models, sometimes improved by incorporating some structural information from ab-initio simulations. Here we use density functional theory based molecular dynamics simulations, comb…