EXAFS study of the crystallization of confined Cs halides

The proposed EXAFS aims to solve the local environment of molten Cs halides infiltrated in SBA-15 mesoporous silica that could reveal the existence of tensile strains (i.e. negative pressure) exerted by the silica nanochannel walls. We expect changes in coordination number and in Cs-Halide Ion bond length distributions as the melt is infiltrated in the nanochannels. These results could support the hypothesis of the relevance of negative pressure as the driving force for the stabilization of low-density polymorphs in nanoscale confinement instead of the standard explanations based on surface energy arguments.