Components designed with polymers are often disposable and can be recycled.
However, a recycled blend of polymers does not necessarily turn out as well as the original component device, with phase separation leading to higher component failure. In order to correct the problem of the degraded performance of recycled polymer blends, clays can be added to enhance the miscibility of the polymer phases. The enhanced miscibility promotes better bulk structural properties. The specific clays used here are organically loaded, closed-site montmorillonite. The loading destabilizes inter-sheet bonding so that when added to polymers, the clay sheets are able to disaggregate and mix better with the polymer phases.