Unravelling structural rearrangement of polymer colloidal crystals under dry sintering conditions
Abstract
Structural rearrangement of polystyrene colloidal crystals under dry sintering conditions has been revealed by in situ grazing incidence X-ray scattering. Measured diffraction patterns were analysed using distorted wave Born approximation (DWBA) theory and the structural parameters of as-grown colloidal crystals of three different particle sizes were determined for in-plane and out-of-plane directions in a film. By analysing the temperature evolution of diffraction peak positions, integrated intensities, and widths the detailed scenario of structural rearrangement of crystalline domains at a nanoscale has been revealed, including thermal expansion, particle shape transformation and crystal amorphisation. Based on DWBA analysis we demonstrate that in the process of dry sintering the shape of colloidal particles in a crystal transforms from a sphere to a polyhedron. Our results deepen the understanding of thermal annealing of polymer colloidal crystals as an efficient route to the design of new nano-materials.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1807.00932,
title = {Unravelling structural rearrangement of polymer colloidal crystals under dry sintering conditions},
author = {Alexey V. Zozulya and Ivan A. Zaluzhnyy and Nastasia Mukharamova and Sergey Lazarev and Janne-Mieke Meijer and Ruslan P. Kurta and Anatoly Shabalin and Michael Sprung and Andrei V. Petukhov and Ivan A. Vartanyants},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.00932},
year = {2018}
}