Issue 42, 2023

Sizing multimodal suspensions with differential dynamic microscopy

Abstract

Differential dynamic microscopy (DDM) can be used to extract the mean particle size from videos of suspensions. However, many suspensions have multimodal particle size distributions, for which a single ‘mean’ is not a sufficient description. After clarifying how different particle sizes contribute to the signal in DDM, we show that standard DDM analysis can extract the mean sizes of two populations in a bimodal suspension given prior knowledge of the sample's bimodality. Further, the use of the CONTIN algorithm obviates the need for such prior knowledge. Finally, we show that by selectively analysing portions of the DDM images, we can size a trimodal suspension where the large particles would otherwise dominate the signal, again without prior knowledge of the trimodality.

Graphical abstract: Sizing multimodal suspensions with differential dynamic microscopy

Associated articles

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
06 May 2023
Accepted
10 Oct 2023
First published
16 Oct 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Soft Matter, 2023,19, 8179-8192

Sizing multimodal suspensions with differential dynamic microscopy

J. J. Bradley, V. A. Martinez, J. Arlt, J. R. Royer and W. C. K. Poon, Soft Matter, 2023, 19, 8179 DOI: 10.1039/D3SM00593C

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