A Non-Invasive Method to Directly Quantify Surface Heterogeneity of Porous Materials

Published

February 22, 2018

Author(s)

Wei-Shan NMN Chiang, Daniel Georgi, Taner Yildirim, Jin-hong Chen, Yun Liu

Abstract

Many porous materials have widely differing pore surface properties because the matrix materials forming the pores are heterogeneous at microscopic levels resulting in different adsorption/desorption behaviors and storage capacity of guest molecules in pores. However, it has been extremely challenging to measure the variation of the pore surface properties in a complicated porous system. Built upon the conventional Porod's law scattering theory applicable only to porous materials with homogeneous matrix, a generalized Porod's scattering law method (GPSLM) is developed here to study heterogeneous porous materials and directly obtain surface area averaged scattering length density (SLD) and SLD varation of pore surfaces. As SLD is a function of the chemical formula and density of matrix, the noninvasive GPSLM provides a new way to probe surface compositional heterogeneity. GPSLM can be applied to a wide range of heterogeneous materials especially, but not limited to, porous media and colloids using either neutron or X-ray scattering techniques.

Citation

Nature Communications

Volume

9

Issue

1

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

surface heterogeneity, porous materials, small-angle neutron scattering, Porod's scattering

Citation

, W. , Georgi, D. , Yildirim, T. , Chen, J. and Liu, Y. (2018), A Non-Invasive Method to Directly Quantify Surface Heterogeneity of Porous Materials, Nature Communications, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=923574 (Accessed April 23, 2024)