CrysAlisPRO: facilitating variable temperature experiments
A. Griffin, Alan M. Bond · Acta Crystallographica Section A Foundations of Crystallography · 2011
Carbon nanotubes are nanometer sized channels that have a very high potential for applications such as selective chemical filtration or water desalination.For such purposes, large membranes of parallel nanotubes, where all metal-based catalyst particles potentially obstructing nanotubes have been removed, are needed.An original experimental setup based on X-ray scattering and fluorescence has been designed to characterize membranes of arbitrarily large surface (cm² to m²) [1].We are able to determine quantitatively the nanotube alignment in the membrane, the density of nanotubes and to check for the removal of metal-based nanoparticles.We will present the set-up, the models we developed to analyze experimental data and some results obtained on the set-up.The set-up/modeling can also be adapted to others membranes than those of nanotubes, using small or wide angle scattering depending on the membrane composition.It should be underlined than although the analysis requires complete orientational modeling within the framework of X-ray scattering theory, the set-up is designed for a non-specialist and could be used for instance on an industrial production line, automatic fitting of the data providing one with two-dimensional mappings of the density, chemical composition and nanotube orientation in direct space (figure).