ABSTRACT
This chapter examines details of the structure of the gel and discusses some physical properties such as pair correlation functions and fractal dimensions. Several kinds of functions and analyses are used for characterizing structures of silica gels comparing with clusters and aggregates. The multifractality of the structure of gels is called as super-aggregates. Fractal dimension analyses are often applied to experimental observations; however, some caution is necessary for comparison among works, especially for systems with different observation methods. The existence of different length scale regions is consistent with the findings in other theoretical calculations using some assumptions for the mechanism of the formation. The structures of clusters, aggregates, and gels are compared by several methods. To learn the structure formation of gels, it is useful to consider individual networks by silica parts, water parts, and salt parts separately and then mixing of them.
