It is a nanomaterial, made up of very small disk-shaped crystals, that is used in multiple industrial applications.
Laponite was first marketed by the company Laporte plc, and is currently produced by BYK Additives & Instruments.
[1][2][3][4][5] Laponite is not an approved mineral species, since it is not naturally occurring and it is not produced by geological processes.
[6] In the first formulation of laponite created by Neumann in 1962, the synthetic clay was determined to be a fluorohectorite, and was produced in the form of discs that were 1 nanometer thick, and with a diameter of 60 to 80 nanometres.
[5] In later years, Neumann also created other variants of laponite including a lithium-free magnesium silicate clay, a form of synthetic stevensite, and an iron silicate clay, which was a synthetic form of nontronite.