title: Characterization of nanoporous structures: from three dimensions to two dimensions.
abstract: The scanning electron microscope (SEM) has revealed a colorful three-dimensional world due to its great depth of field. However, the abundance of structural information imposes tough challenges to quantitative image analysis. In the current investigation, we developed a SEM-image polishing (SIP) based quantitative SEM-image analysis (QSIA) technique. As an example, QSIA was employed to characterize nanoporous silica. The results confirmed that the nanoporous silica samples, processed via sol-gel methods, were single-parameter, with the pore size being the only variable. The QSIA technique may pave the way to fast and accurate data mining of nanoscaled materials.
authors.affiliation: Department of Structural Engineering, University of California - San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0085, USA and X-ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, USA. cang.zhao@aps.anl.gov.
authors.forename: Cang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Department of Structural Engineering, University of California - San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0085, USA and Program of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California - San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Qiao