Small-angle X-ray scattering to characterize nanostructures in inorganic and hybrid materials chemistry

With the improved control of the nanostructure and the handling of multicomponent systems in sol-gel chemistry, the research interest in this field increased significantly in the past decade. For the characterization of the nanostructure of inorganic-organic hybrid materials, small-angle X-ray scattering has proven to be one of the most important techniques. By using X-rays from synchrotron radiation sources, even the structural development during processing can be followed in-situ. This short note reviews some analytical evaluation procedures used to study hybrid materials. While numerical simulation tools are nowadays available to obtain detailed fits of scattering curves, the use of analytical models is still very useful if the evaluation and interpretation of the obtained parameters is straightforward.