SAXS/WAXS for monitoring structure evolution in ultranarrow alkylamine-coated ZnS nanoparticle suspensions

We aim to investigate the structure evolution in suspensions of ultranarrow, monodispersed ZnS nanowires and nanorods in different solvents and concentrations. The hierarchical structure in this system starts from the atomic level structure of the Zn and S ions, through the molecular level structuring of their surfactant coating, and finally to the ‘artificial crystals’ formed by the nanoparticle assemblies. In addition to static measurements, dynamic SAXS/WAXS ‘snapshots’ of select nanoparticle suspensions will be taken under shear flow. The SAXS/WAXS setup combined with the shear cell at ID-02 is particularly suited for the above studies with d-spacing values ranging from few Ångstroms (atomic scale) to the order of several nm. The ultimate goal of the experiment is to correlate the hierarchical structure obtained from SAXS/WAXS measurements with the optical properties (photoluminescence and optical absorption spectroscopy in the UV-vis) of the ZnS nanoparticle assemblies.