Probing nanophase segregation in aqueous solutions

DOI

In recent experiments we accidentally observed the onset of nanophase segregation in concentrated LiCl-water solutions by increasing dilution, in the deeply undercooled regime. We could assign an unexpected extra-signal observed in Traansient Grating spectra to the formation of clusters of most likely pure water of nanometre size (3-5 nm). This result was further corroborated by SANS and SAXS experiments, but the high background contribution from the cryostat prevented a quantitative analysis of the size and cluster distribution. Here we propose to take advantage of the unique Q-range of the Nimrod spectrometer to measure in a single scan the onset of the observed heterogeneities, and the evolution of the cluster distribution. The observation of nanophase segregation could provide an alternative interpretation to the highly debated liquid-liquid transition observed in aqueous solutions

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.67792712
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/67792712
Provenance
Creator Professor Fabio Bruni; Professor Maria Antonietta Ricci; Miss Violeta Fuentes-Landete; Ms Eleonora Stefanutti; Dr Tom Headen; Professor Thomas Loerting; Dr Livia Bove
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2018
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Natural Sciences; Physics
Temporal Coverage Begin 2015-11-09T09:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2015-11-12T09:00:00Z