The English name kaolin was borrowed in 1727 from François Xavier d'Entrecolles's 1712 French reports on the manufacture of Jingdezhen porcelain.

[12] D'Entrecolles was transcribing the Chinese term 高嶺土, now romanized as gāolǐngtǔ in pinyin, taken from the name of the village of Gaoling ("High Ridge") near Ehu in Fuliang County, now part of Jiangxi Province's Jingdezhen Prefecture.

[18] Kaolinite group clays undergo a series of phase transformations upon thermal treatment in air at atmospheric pressure.

High-energy milling of kaolin results in the formation of a mechanochemically amorphized phase similar to metakaolin, although the properties of this solid are quite different.

Endothermic dehydration of kaolinite begins at 550–600 °C producing disordered metakaolin, but continuous hydroxyl loss is observed up to 900 °C (1,650 °F).

[22] Although historically there was much disagreement concerning the nature of the metakaolin phase, extensive research has led to a general consensus that metakaolin is not a simple mixture of amorphous silica (SiO2) and alumina (Al2O3), but rather a complex amorphous structure that retains some longer-range order (but not strictly crystalline) due to stacking of its hexagonal layers.

[22] Further heating to 925–950 °C converts metakaolin to an aluminium-silicon spinel which is sometimes also referred to as a gamma-alumina type structure: Upon calcination above 1050 °C, the spinel phase nucleates and transforms to platelet mullite and highly crystalline cristobalite: Finally, at 1400 °C the "needle" form of mullite appears, offering substantial increases in structural strength and heat resistance.

Kaolinite is one of the most common minerals; it is mined, as kaolin, in Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Iran, Malaysia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Tanzania, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam.

[23] Kaolinite clay occurs in abundance in soils that have formed from the chemical weathering of rocks in hot, moist climates; for example in tropical rainforest areas.

[25] In the United States, the main kaolin deposits are found in central Georgia, on a stretch of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line between Augusta and Macon.

The deposits were formed between the late Cretaceous and early Paleogene, about 100 to 45 million years ago, in sediments derived from weathered igneous and metakaolin rocks.

[29] During the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum sediments deposited in the Espluga Freda area of Spain were enriched with kaolinite from a detrital source due to denudation.

[30] Difficulties are encountered when trying to explain kaolinite formation under atmospheric conditions by extrapolation of thermodynamic data from the more successful high-temperature syntheses.

[31] La Iglesia and Van Oosterwijk-Gastuche (1978)[32] thought that the conditions under which kaolinite will nucleate can be deduced from stability diagrams, based as they are on dissolution data.

Because of a lack of convincing results in their own experiments, La Iglesia and Van Oosterwijk-Gastuche (1978) had to conclude, however, that there were other, still unknown, factors involved in the low-temperature nucleation of kaolinite.

The importance of syntheses at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure towards the understanding of the mechanism involved in the nucleation of clay minerals lies in overcoming these energy barriers.

Fripiat and Herbillon (1971),[34] in a review on the formation of kaolinite, raised the fundamental question how a disordered material (i.e., the amorphous fraction of tropical soils) could ever be transformed into a corresponding ordered structure.

This transformation seems to take place in soils without major changes in the environment, in a relatively short period of time, and at ambient temperature (and pressure).

Field evidence illustrating the importance of the removal of water from the kaolinite reaction has been supplied by Gastuche and DeKimpe (1962).

While studying soil formation on a basaltic rock in Kivu (Zaïre), they noted how the occurrence of kaolinite depended on the "degrée de drainage" of the area involved.

The possible significance of alternating wet and dry conditions on the transition of allophane into kaolinite has been stressed by Tamura and Jackson (1953).