Flow at interfaces: A new device for x-ray surface scattering investigations

Abstract

A fluidic cell based setup is described which allows for microbeam grazing incidence small angle x-ray scattering characterization of the interface between a solid substrate and a flowing liquid. This cell can potentially be used to study in situ a wide variety of systems ranging from synthetic and natural colloids to biological molecules. The selected channel geometry enables the characterization of the solid-liquid interface during mixing of different solutions. As a proof of concept, measurements on an aqueous gold nanoparticle solution in contact with a glass surface are presented that show that the structure at the interface can be probed during flow.

Advanced grazing-incidence techniques for modern soft-matter materials analysis

“…GISAXS at the solid-liquid interface typically suffers from the high absorption of the X-ray beam in the liquid phase in the common energy range for hard X-rays. With the use of a microfluidic device instead of a liquid cell, the X-ray beam path inside the liquid is significantly reduced, which allows for the use of the common X-ray energies available at beamlines typically used for GISAXS (Moulin et al, 2008). Of course, the sample area inside the microfluidic cell is strongly reduced compared with a liquid cell as well, which would also result in over-illumination using a large X-ray beam.…”

P03, the microfocus and nanofocus X-ray scattering (MiNaXS) beamline of the PETRA III storage ring: the microfocus endstation

“…Several sample environments are available at the beamline. To name just a few, a droplet deposition apparatus, a microfluidic cell adapted for GISAXS (grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering) investigation (Moulin et al, 2008;Metwalli et al, 2009), a sputter deposition chamber and an imaging ellipsometer (Kö rstgens et al, 2010; Roth et al, 2011). Sample environments provided by the users can be implemented either on a hexapod (M-824, PI, Germany) or on a HUBER goniometer.…”

Functional materials analysis usingin situandin operandoX-ray and neutron scattering

“…Although not detailed here, examples include combining imaging ellipsometry and GISAXS for studies of polymer morphologies (Kö rstgens et al, 2010(Kö rstgens et al, , 2012, and simultaneous conductivity and SAXS experiments for investigating polymer electrolyte membranes (Jackson et al, 2013). Additionally, a number of sample environments have been developed which enable a variety of in situ investigations, such as a spray deposition chamber for film formation (Al-Hussein et al, 2013), stopped-flow systems for the mixing of different components (Grillo, 2009), solvent vapour and humidity chambers (Smilgies et al, 2009;Gu et al, 2013;Jackson et al, 2013), and flow cells (Moulin et al, 2008;Manet et al, 2011;Qazi et al, 2011). Similarly, advances in computational resources allow a more detailed insight into the underlying structure, dynamics and processes being investigated, where the modelling of these is highly complex in whole in operando data sets.…”