Structural Characterization of Colloidal Core-shell Polymer-based Nanoparticles Using Small-angle X-ray Scattering

Colloidal particle complexes are often characterized by small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) techniques. The present work demonstrates SAXS analysis of inhomogeneous core-shell nanoparticles with complex shell morphologies. Different experimental techniques such as variation of particle composition and contrast variation method, and analytical techniques such as Monte Carlo simulation and indirect Fourier transformation are applied to obtain structural parameters of polymer-based core-shell nanoparticles. It is shown that the SAXS results are consistent with other measurements performed by electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, dynamic light scattering, thermogravimetry, helium pycnometry and BET.