Study of Nanoparticles by Dynamic Light Scattering: Processing Challenges (Supporting Information)

Description

Dynamic light scattering is a widely used method in chemistry, materials science, biochemistry and related fields. Despite its unsurpassed efficiency in measuring particle size in dispersions from the nanometer to micrometers, this method has a serious problem in processing and interpreting experimental data. Instrument noise and polydispersity of the sample lead to the situation when one initial autocorrelation function corresponds to several different particle size distributions. Sometimes these different solutions of the inverse task can be found by changing parameters in the software. Sometimes the scientist cannot be suspicious of possible other solutions, having one result from the program. In this article I demonstrate the problem on model and experimental data using three known programs: CONTIN and the Malvern Zetasizer and Photocor Complex instrument software. I also present my own program Autocor, which allows to test our own hypotheses about the modality and shape of the particle size distribution by optimizing the parameters of our own models. The data-set contains the Autocor source files and calculations details for model and experimental DLS data.

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