Short range order of silica particles bound through adsorbed polymer layers

Small angle neutron scattering was used to examine the organization of silica spheres which had been flocculated by various cationic copolymers. When the adsorbed polymers bound the spheres without compensating their surface charge, the resulting aggregates had a liquid-like short range order. When the polymers compensated for the surface charges, we found only tenuous aggregates with self-similar structures.This work used the neutron beams of ILL in Grenoble and LLB in Saclay.