Small-Angle Scattering from Mass and Surface Fractals

Abstract

The concepts of mass and surface fractals are introduced, and the corresponding small-angle scattering (SAS; X-rays, neutrons) intensities are computed. It is shown how to resolve the fractal structure of various complex systems from experimental scattering measurements, and how obtained data are related to specific features of the fractal models. We present and discuss various mass and surface fractal structures, including fractals generated from iterated function systems and cellular automata. In addition to the fractal dimension and the overall fractal size, the suggested analysis allows us to obtain the iteration number, the number of basic units which form the fractal and the scaling factor.