Fractal analysis of the porous silica made from template of alkylketene dimer

Yamaguchi, Daisuke; Mayama, Hiroyuki*; Koizumi, Satoshi; Tsujii, Kaoru*; Hashimoto, Takeji

In this study, the structure of the "novel" porous silica specimens prepared by sol-gel method with alkylketene dimer (AKD) template was characterized on the length scale from nanometers to tens of microns by small-angle neutron scattering measurements. AKD is a kind of wax and has been proven to form a fractal structure by recrystallization. Due to the AKD template, the porous silica product exhibited a distinct mass-fractal structure, which persists over the length scale ten times larger than that of conventional silica aerogel. While on the other hand, the mass fractal dimension is similar between the silica aerogels and the specimen investigated in this study, suggesting that the space symmetry is somewhat similar between those two systems.