SAXS Study of the Structure of Fibrous Ceric Hydrogen Phosphate Gels

Abstract Gel-like ceric hydrogen phosphates with unusual 1D fibrous structure are known since the end of 19th century. Nevertheless, the structure of these materials is still poorly understood. Here we first have applied small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) technique to get a deeper insight into the structure of wet ceric hydrogen phosphate gels synthesized from ceric phosphate solutions with various cerium concentration. To interpret SAXS data, we used a structural model considering interparticle interaction. The quantity of independent model parameters was determined by the number of independent singular vectors and by the number of Shannon channels. Finally, key parameters characterizing the scattering from gels have been determined.