Probing porous ceramics using small-angle scattering

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Abstract
Small–angle neutron scattering (SANS) has a significant role in metallurgy, polymer science, biology, chemistry, geology, and condensed matter physics. It is of increasing interest to extend its application to other technologically–important materials, such as partially sintered ceramics and gels, plasma–sprayed deposits, and reinforced composites. These materials contain concentrated heterogeneous microstructures in the 0.1 μm − 10 pm scale regime. The SANS from such coarse microstructures is usually dominated by multiple scattering. Indeed, for partially–sintered ceramics and plasma-sprayed deposits, multiple SANS (MSANS) causes observable beam-broadening, with no unscattered transmitted beam surviving passage through the sample. However, with complementary information on the sample density and the scattering morphology, the beambroadening can be related to the mean scatterer size. The broadening itself brings this information within range of standard SANS instruments. where traditional single scatter SANS experiments face a maximum scatterer size limitation of ∼ 100 nm.