A review of some recent applications of small-angle scattering in studies of polydisperse systems and porous materials

Recent progress in two fields of small-angle scattering is reviewed: (a) New procedures have been developed by Kotlarchyk and Chen and by Triolo, Griffith, and Compere for calculating the intensity of the small-angle scattering from polydisperse systems of interacting particles of different sizes. These techniques have significantly increased the quantitative information that can be obtained from the scattering data. (b) The pore boundaries in many porous solids have been found to be fractal surfaces. In a porous solid in which the pores have an average diameter ϵ and the pore boundary surfaces have a fractal dimension D, the scattered intensity for qϵ, >> 1 is proportional to q^−(6-D), where q = πλ⁻¹sin(θ/2), θ is the scattering angle, and λ is the wavelength. Some small-angle scattering studies of fractal porosity are outlined.