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Structural Analysis of Cylindrical Particles by Small Angle X-ray Scattering
(2005)
- The objective of this work is to analyze nano-scaled cylindrical particles by small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). Three systems with cylinder-shaped particles: (1) Laponite particles in aqueous solutions, (2) Poly(carbon suboxide) particles in binary water/DMF solutions, and (3) Suprastructural aggregates of coil-ring-coil block copolymers in cyclohexane, have been studied by SAXS performing either a Kratky-Compact-Camera in our laboratory or ID2 beamline of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble. The synthetic clay particles, Laponite RD, have been chosen as ideal disc-shaped model particles. In combination of SAXS with static light scattering, the scattering intensities of a concentration serial (volume fraction from 0.0002 to 0.0016) were measured in almost three orders of magnitude of the scattering vector q. Through extrapolation of concentration the scattering intensity at vanishing concentration, i.e. the form factor P(q) of particles was achieved. It shows q-2 decay at intermediate q range, which indicates that the shape of single Laponite particle in aqueous solution is platelet. The plateau of the form factor at low q range implies that there is no aggregate or cluster structure, and the Laponite particles are dispersed completely under the investigated conditions. More detailed structural information was then obtained by fitting of P(q) with disc model. The radii of the discs exhibit a large polydispersity. A radius of 10.5 nm with Schulz-Zimm distribution of Rw/Rn = 1.5 (where Rw and Rn denote weight and number average radius, respectively) was found to fit the form factor perfectly. The thickness of one single platelet was determined to be 0.9 nm. The weight averaged molecular weight and radius of gyration were determined to be 930 kg/mol and 13.4 nm, respectively. The inter-particle interactions of Laponite particles were investigated by the structure factor S(q), from which the effective diameter of interparticle interactions deff was determined for the first time. The strong electrostatic Coulomb repulsion between charged Laponite particles was attributed to the much higher value of deff (= 46 nm), in comparison to 2Rg (= 27 nm). The recently developed multicomponent interaction site model was performed by Harnau to predict these experimental structure factors. An effective potential of interaction, which pays attention to a screened Coulomb interaction as well as an attractive interaction, leads to the best description of the model to the experimental data. By means of SAXS, the size of synthetic polymer carbon suboxide ((C3O2)n) dissolved in binary water/DMF solutions was determined for the first time with radius of gyration Rg = 1.7 nm and molecular weight Mw = 2760 g/mol, which corresponds to a polymerization’s degree of about 40. This value is much larger than literature one (5-10). The form factor of polymer carbon suboxide can be described by a semiflexible chain model. The radius of gyration in cross-section RC and molecular weight per unit length ML were obtained to be 0.3 nm and 350 g/(mol.nm), respectively, which can confirm the fact that the chemical structure of poly(carbon suboxide) is repeated pyronic ring, as suggested in most literatures. Thus the structure and size of polymer carbon suboxide were characterized completely by SAXS. Finally, SAXS was employed to analyze a suprastructural aggregation system derived by self-assembly of coil-ring-coil block copolymers. This is a newly synthesized subclass of rod-coil block copolymers composed of a nanometer-sized shape-persistent macrocycle and two covalently attached polystyrene (PS) coils. The solubility of the rigid ring is largely enhanced due to the attachment of the flexible side groups. With suitable length of the flexible side groups (Mw (PS) = 2500 g/mol) the block copolymers can form colloidal-sized aggregates in selected solvent cyclohexane, which were concluded to be of cylindrical shape with the rigid rings packing densely in a tubular way and the flexible side groups arranging outside of the ring. Such aggregated cylinder brushes can be further confirmed to exist as a mixture of cylinder bundles by analyzing the local structural parameter ML (= 25730 g/(mol.nm), molecular weight per nm length of cylindrical objects). In comparison of this value with M0 (= 6500 g/mol, molecular weight of single coil-ring-coil block copolymer) and d (= 0.6 nm, distance of adjacent densely packed rings), the number fraction of coexisted single cylinder, bi- and tri-cylinder bundles was resulted to be 1:1:2. Through fitting by using approximated circular cylinder model the radius of single cylinders was determined to be 2.6 nm (polydispersity 20 percent) with a hollow inside of radius of 1.2 nm.
