Abstract The focus of this articles was to investigate the suitability of mini-emulsion for the synthesis of polymer nanocomposites based on aqueous solution of exfoliated clay, in a one-step nano-incorporation technique. The clay platelets were ‘‘coated’’ with charged molecules namely: 4-amino-1-naphtalenesulphonic acidare ( ANS), thus resulting in a mutually strong repulsion of clay platelets, which can be homogeneously dispersed in water “exfoliated”, an aqueous solution of exfoliated clays was dispersed in a monomer phase, followed by emulsification in the presence of: styrene monomers, hydrophobe and and surfactant into miniemulsions phase. The nanostructure of an aqueous solution of coated clay and the nanocomposites was investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). TEM and XRD indicated that clay platelets were mainly exfoliated into water after treated with ANS , except at relatively high clay content. TEM also revealed that nanocomposites lattices had the so-called ‘‘armored’’ structure, where the nanosized clay sheets are distributed around the edges of the copolymer particles.