Abstract
The present chapter is focused on problems and challenges for creation of polymer composites using clay minerals. The main difficulties are shown to be the low thermal stability of modifying mineral additives, such as decomposition; of the most commercially available modifying additives, quaternary ammonium salts decompose below the processing temperatures of most polymers and their low long-term thermal stability during processing and operation. Extrapolation of research results to other objects is complicated because of insufficient understanding of the mechanism of this nanotechnology for specific polymer matrices. The main directions of development of this nanotechnology are shown to be the use of polymers and oligomers as heat-resistant modifying additives of clay minerals.