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Fractal character of the SAXS correlation volume in poly(ethylene glycol)/silica hybrid wet gels

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Abstract

Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) was employed to study the nanostructural properties of poly(ethylene glycol)(PEG)/silica hybrid wet gels prepared from hydrolysis of tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) in mixtures with PEG/(PEG + TEOS) molar ratio in the nominal range between 0 and 0.8. The SAXS pattern was found to be well fitted by the scattering from a polymeric particle of radius of gyration R g with an internal structure of primary silica particles described by a polymeric constraint of a mass-fractal of dimension D. R g increases with the PEG quantity while D first increases from 2.24 for the pure TEOS-derived gel to reach values between 2.46 and 2.40 with the additions of PEG. The correlation volume V c as determined by SAXS for such a polymeric structure behaves as a volume-fractal and accordingly scales with R g as V c ~ R Dg . An overall mean value of about 1 nm could be estimated as an upper limit for the radius of the primary silica particle building up the structure of all the wet gels, independent of the PEG addition.

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Acknowledgments

Research partially supported by LNLS—National Synchrotron Light Laboratory, FAPESP, and CNPq, Brazil.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IGCE, Departamento de Física, Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp), Cx.P. 178, Rio Claro, SP, 13500-970, Brazil

    Dario A. Donatti, Dimas R. Vollet & A. Ibañez Ruiz

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  1. Dario A. Donatti
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  2. Dimas R. Vollet
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  3. A. Ibañez Ruiz
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Correspondence to Dimas R. Vollet.

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Donatti, D.A., Vollet, D.R. & Ibañez Ruiz, A. Fractal character of the SAXS correlation volume in poly(ethylene glycol)/silica hybrid wet gels. J Sol-Gel Sci Technol 54, 243–248 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10971-010-2189-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10971-010-2189-6

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