Control of Mechanical Stability of Hollow Silica Particles, and Its Measurement by Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry.

Hollow silica particles (HSPs) have become the focus of interest in many laboratories recently, because of their versatility, stemming from the ability to control their size and shape, as well as surface functionalization. Determining the mechanical stability of hollow particles is essential for their use, both in applications in which they need to retain their structure, as well as those in which they need to break down. We have synthesized a series of HSPs (inner diameter of 231 nm) with increasing wall thickness (7-25 nm), using a template approach.

Disordered spheres with extensive overlap in projection: image simulation and analysis.

This article simulates highly overlapped projections of spherical particles that are distributed randomly in space. The size and number of the features in the projections are examined as well as how these features change with particle size and concentration. First, there are discernable features in projection even when particles overlap extensively, and the size of these discernable features is the expected size of an individual particle.

Nanoscale morphology in precisely sequenced poly(ethylene-co-acrylic acid) zinc ionomers.

The morphology of a series of linear poly(ethylene-co-acrylic acid) zinc-neutralized ionomers with either precisely or randomly spaced acid groups was investigated using X-ray scattering, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). Scattering from semicrystalline, precise ionomers has contributions from acid layers associated with the crystallites and ionic aggregates dispersed in the amorphous phase. The precisely controlled acid spacing in these ionomers reduces the polydispersity in the aggregate correlation length and yields more intense, well-defined scattering peaks.