Dynamic light scattering (DLS) is frequently used to characterize suspensions of pyrogenic silica which consists of polydisperse fractal aggregates of sintered spherical primary particles. As the method primarily measures temporal fluctuations of scattered light caused by the translational and rotational diffusive motion of the aggregates it is an important prerequisite to identify those structural properties that are measurable with DLS and to quantify the method's sensitivity to changes in these properties. In a recent paper [1] we have investigated the structure‐hydrodynamics relationship via simulations. Here, the validation of the simulation results by experimental data is presented. Therefore, the structure of different pyrogenic silica grades has been characterized by static light and X‐ray scattering and the diffusional properties were obtained by multi‐angle DLS measurements. It is shown that the hydrodynamic radii determined with DLS scale well with the mean aggregate radius of gyration but that the influence of rotational diffusion has to be accounted for in the measurements.
Dynamic light scattering (DLS) is a method used to size nanoscale and submicron particles by measuring their thermal motion (diffusion) in a liquid environment. The measured diffusion coefficients are related to the hydrodynamic particle size via the Stokes‐Einstein equation. This paper addresses the application of DLS for the characterization of diluted suspensions of pyrogenic silica, which consist of polydisperse fractal‐like aggregates composed of sintered spherical primary particles. Simulations are employed to establish a relationship between the structural properties of the aggregates and their diffusional behavior. Therefore, an algorithm is developed that enables the generation of aggregates with a tunable fractal dimension and an arbitrary number of primary particles. The results provide evidence that the hydrodynamic radii show a different scaling compared to the structural radius of gyration, which is of great relevance for the interpretation of DLS results. In addition, the influence of rotational diffusion has to be accounted for in the measurements.
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