Recently I have been trying to understand the effect of silica gel pore size on a mechanochemical reaction. It involves intense milling of spherical silica gel of similar particle size distribution but different pore sizes (6 nm, 10 nm, 30 nm and 50 nm, as indicated by the manufacturer).
I was told that silica with larger pore sizes would break more easily than those with smaller pore sizes when being milled, which makes sense because they would have more empty spaces inside the structure to make them more fragile.
Upon milling, the silica broke into different sizes; some are large, and some are extremely small and become a cluster of fine particles. However, it seems that not even TEM is able to visualize the pores this small. Is there any method that can actually visualize the structure of pores?
Yongze Chen You could try porosimetry, In my day it was mercury porosimetry but I believe that there are other choices these days. One word of caution. I worked with silica gel (Davison 70) as a catalyst support and the pores could be fractured by the intrusion of Hg under pressure.
Depending on size, it may be possible to see such pores with a high resolution CT. Or, using micro x-ray fluorescence (micro-XRF) attached to an SEM.
You might try high resolution micro-x-ray tomography? It will produce A 3D image allowing 3D measurements, great detail.
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