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Study of the surfactant role in latex–aerogel systems by scanning transmission electron microscopy on aqueous suspensions
Author(s) -
PERRET A.,
FORAY G.,
MASENELLIVARLOT K.,
MAIRE E.,
YRIEIX B.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of microscopy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.569
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1365-2818
pISSN - 0022-2720
DOI - 10.1111/jmi.12603
Subject(s) - aerogel , materials science , pulmonary surfactant , environmental scanning electron microscope , nanoporous , scanning electron microscope , chemical engineering , microstructure , ternary operation , nanoscopic scale , aqueous solution , transmission electron microscopy , evaporation , suspension (topology) , nanotechnology , composite material , chemistry , organic chemistry , physics , mathematics , homotopy , computer science , pure mathematics , engineering , thermodynamics , programming language
Summary For insulation applications, boards thinner than 2 cm are under design with specific thermal conductivities lower than 15 mW m −1 K −1 . This requires binding slightly hydrophobic aerogels which are highly nanoporous granular materials. To reach this step and ensure insulation board durability at the building scale, it is compulsory to design, characterise and analyse the microstructure at the nanoscale. It is indeed necessary to understand how the solid material is formed from a liquid suspension. This issue is addressed in this paper through wet‐STEM experiments carried out in an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM). Latex–surfactant binary blends and latex–surfactant–aerogel ternary systems are studied, with two different surfactants of very different chemical structures. Image analysis is used to distinguish the different components and get quantitative morphological parameters which describe the sample architecture. The evolution of such morphological parameters during water evaporation permits a good understanding of the role of the surfactant.