SOL-GEL KINETICS .2. CHEMICAL SPECIATION MODELING

We present an exact theoretical kinetic formalism which specifically treats the temporal evolution of the various chemical functional groups about a specific silicon atom undergoing concurrent hydrolysis and condensation reactions. This formalism is applied to the chemical kinetics of a typical sol-gel reaction system. We also present a simplified statistical reaction model which reduces the number of chemically distinct rate coefficients necessary to describe the kinetics from 165 to 3. Experimental results which support this statistical model are also presented.