Structure, dynamics and interactions in concentrated colloidal suspensions and gels

Abstract

The application of static and dynamic light scattering to many colloidal systems of practical interest has often be considered too complicated owing to strong multiple scattering. There are two new approaches to overcome this problem. One of them aims at suppressing contributions from multiple scattering using novel cross-correlation schemes. While this relies on the suppression of multiple scattering, the so-called diffusing wave spectroscopy (DWS) works in the limit of very strong multiple scattering. DWS can be used for the characterization of dynamic and static properties of colloidal systems on a large range of time and length scales ranging from a few Angstroms to hundreds of nanometers. We demonstrate that a wealth of information can be obtained from these methods on the structure, dynamics, interaction effects, stability, aggregation and solgel transition in colloidal dispersions.