Methods for describing structure of novel porous materials: A review

Abstract

The physical and mechanical properties of heterogeneous materials are mainly determined by their structure. Due to the wide capabilities of modern technologies for the formation of complex multilevel pore structure of ceramics and other materials, the ability of modern methods to describe and characterize such a structure completely is of particular interest. Traditionally, the pore structure is characterized by a large number of parameters such as porosity, type and shape of pores, the fraction of cross-sectional area of channels, pore size distribution, etc. However, recently, at least three new quantities are often used to describe and measure the structure of various complex media: The Minkowski functionals, fabric tensors, and correlation functions. This review is aimed to consider all these three approaches and their capabilities for describing and measuring the peculiarities of the structure of porous materials.