PARTICLE SIZING BY PHOTON-CORRELATION SPECTROSCOPY .3. MONO AND BIMODAL DISTRIBUTIONS AND DATA-ANALYSIS

The possibilities and limitations of photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS) as a practical tool for particle sizing are reviewed. In this part the most frequently used methods of data analysis are briefly surveyed. The practical performances for the determination of particle size distributions were evaluated by a comparative study with different kinds of users (industrial and academic research groups and manufacturers). The PCS results were also compared with electron microscopy (EM) and static light scattering (SLS) results. Thereby it was confirmed that the amount of reliable information that can be obtained by PCS about particle size distributions with measuring times of the order of minutes is limited by the ill-conditioning of the data inversion procedure, among other factors. Nevertheless, the information obtained from the PCS measurements agrees essentially with the EM and SLS results.