Eur. Phys. J. B 63, 153-163 (2008)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2008-00223-9

Investigation of self-assembled fractal porous-silica over a wide range of length scales using a combined small-angle scattering method

¹ Advanced Science Research Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Tokai, Naka, Ibaraki, 319-1195, Japan
² Nanotechnology Research Center, Research Institute for Electronic Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 001-0021, Japan
³ CREST, JST, Kawaguchi, Saitama, 338-8570, Japan

Corresponding author: ^a yamaguchi.daisuke@jaea.go.jp

Received: 18 September 2007
Revised: 11 March 2008
Published online: 13 June 2008

Abstract

The unique structure of a set of self-assembled porous silica materials was characterized through a combined small-angle scattering (CSAS) method using small- and ultra-small angle neutron scattering as well as small-angle X-ray scattering. The porous silica specimens investigated were prepared by a sol-gel method under the presence of alkylketene dimer (AKD) template particles and through calcination, which leads to the development of porous silica having a mass-fractal structure over length scales from ~ 100 nm to ~ 10 μm. Furthermore, the specimens posses a hierarchical structure, which consist of a fractal porous structure, and also contain primary silica particles less than 10 nm in size, which form a continuous silica matrix. To characterize these complex structures, observation over a broad range of length scales is indispensable. We propose a CSAS technique that serves this purpose well.