Dr Barbara S. Neumann: clay scientist and industrial pioneer; creator of Laponite®

Abstract

In 2019, BYK Additives (Widnes, UK; www.byk.com) marked the 55th anniversary of the discovery by Dr Barbara Zsusanna (Susanna) Neumann of the extraordinary product known as Laponite®. The range of Laponite® products developed in the UK during the early 1960s is one of the first examples of truly nanodimensional materials manufactured on an industrial scale, at a time when the field of nanotechnology was only being hinted at (Feynman, 1959). These hectorite-like synthetic nanoclays with very unusual properties have been an enduring commercial success for the UK company that first patented and introduced them to the market, Laporte Industries, which is now a part of the BYK company. The Laponite® brand has proved tremendously popular with academic and industrial scientists worldwide, being cited in >3000 patents and >2500 published academic articles.

Laponite for biomedical applications: An ophthalmological perspective

“…Laponite® (trademark of the company BYK Additives Ltd) is a synthetic clay developed in the early 1960s [ 8 ] as a rheological additive for pigment dispersions [ 9 ]. It was prepared by the co-precipitation method using Mg and Li sources (MgSO 4 and LiF in the first reports [ 10 ]), together with a silicon source (sodium silicate) in a basic medium.…”

The Clay Minerals Group (CMG): 1947–2022

“…Dr Barbara Z. Neumann, also one of the first CMG members, fled war-torn Hungary in 1940 and spent her research career at the Fullers' Earth Union, Surrey (later Laporte Industries), leading to the discovery of the extraordinary product known as Laponite®. Neumann's remarkable story is fully told in a recent paper by Shafran et al (2020).…”

Laponite-Based Nanocomposite Hydrogels for Drug Delivery Applications

“…The review by Zhang et al provides a deeper dive into how different synthetic hectorite fabrication methods can produce a variety of closely related structures. However, Laponite is typically produced and used commercially, with the brand name Laponite first introduced by Laporte Industries (now BYK) in the early 1960s [ 82 ].…”