Agitation-induced growth of uniform anthracene nanotubes

We propose a time-resolved SANS experiment to investigate the nanotubes formed by anthracene derivatives in methylcyclohexane. These systems show unique behaviour as without perturbation they slowly form amorphous aggregates, but upon perturbation they follow a far more ordered self-assembly process to yield highly ordered and uniform nanotubes. We aim to observe both self-assembly pathways via SANS to gain some insight into this unusual behaviour and the resulting self-assembly mechanism. SANS2D is essential for this experiment due to the high flux and signal-noise ratio required to study these relatively dilute systems (~0.1 vol%). The large Q-range from the overlapping detectors will allow simultaneous monitoring of morphological changes at low Q and the potential emergence of Bragg peaks at mid-high Q arising from regular spacings within the tubes.