Collect. Czech. Chem. Commun. 1995, 60, 1941-1949
https://doi.org/10.1135/cccc19951941

Dynamic Light Scattering from Polymer Solutions: The Subtraction Technique

Petr Štěpáneka and Robert M. Johnsenb

a Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 162 06 Prague 6, Czech Republic
b Institute of Physical Chemistry, University of Uppsala, Box 532, Uppsala 1, Sweden

Abstract

Correlation functions measured in dynamic light scattering on polymer solutions often contain a strong sharp decay which obscures and renders difficult a reliable analysis of other decay processes. We demonstrate that this problem can be circumvented by performing a two-step inverse Laplace transformation. The strong component obtained in the first step is subtracted from the correlation function which is then re-analyzed in the second step. We illustrate this technique on semidilute solutions of polystyrene in cyclohexane and tetrahydrofuran.