A soil particle may be a mineral or a rock fragment. A mineral is a chemical compound formed in nature during a geological process, whereas a rock fragment has a combination of one or more minerals. Based on the nature of atoms, minerals are classified as silicates, aluminates, oxides, carbonates and phosphates.

Out of these, silicate minerals are the most important as they influence the properties of clay soils. Different arrangements of atoms in the silicate minerals give rise to different silicate structures.

Basic Structural Units
Soil minerals are formed from two basic structural units: tetrahedral and octahedral. Considering the valencies of the atoms forming the units, it is clear that the units are not electrically neutral and as such do not exist as single units.

The basic units combine to form sheets in which the oxygen or hydroxyl ions are shared among adjacent units. Three types of sheets are thus formed, namely silica sheet, gibbsite sheet and brucite sheet.

Isomorphous substitution is the replacement of the central atom of the tetrahedral or octahedral unit by another atom during the formation of the sheets.

The sheets then combine to form various two-layer or three-layer sheet minerals. As the basic units of clay minerals are sheet-like structures, the particle formed from stacking of the basic units is also plate-like. As a result, the surface area per unit mass becomes very large.