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Title: Size-refocusing fitting of small-angle X-ray scattering from polydisperse nanoparticles for shape determination
Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) which records reciprocal-space signals with characteristic Bessel-type oscillations is a powerful technique for studying nanoparticles. However, the size polydispersity (or size distribution) of nanoparticles in an ensemble sample smears the oscillational peaks and valleys in the SAXS profile, making it difficult to extract accurate real-space information (e.g.three-dimensional geometry) on the nanoparticles. In this work, a method capable of eliminating the size-distribution-induced smearing effect from SAXS profiles by taking the known size-distribution function into consideration has been developed. The method employs a penalized iterative regression to fit the pair distance distribution function (PDDF) derived from a SAXS profile, recovering the representative PDDF of the nanoparticles. The method has been evaluated with a series of nanoparticle systems of various shapes and size distributions, showing their PDDF profiles to have high fidelity to the reference ideal PDDF profiles. Inverse Fourier transformation of the recovered PDDF profiles gives SAXS profiles presenting the characteristic Bessel-type oscillations, enabling reconstruction of the representative three-dimensional geometry of the nanoparticles. This method will help in the use of SAXS to image synthesized colloidal nanoparticles where size polydispersity is inevitable.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2002960
PAR ID:
10523226
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Publisher / Repository:
International Union of Crystallography
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Journal of Applied Crystallography
Volume:
56
Issue:
6
ISSN:
1600-5767
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1739 to 1750
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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