Dynamic Light Scattering: Applications of Photon Correlation Spectroscopy

In the twenty years since their inception, modern dynamic light-scattering techniques have become increasingly sophisticated, and their applications have grown exceedingly diverse. Applications of the techniques to problems in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, and fluid mechanics have prolifer­ ated. It is probably no longer possible for one or two authors to write a monograph to cover in depth the advances in scattering techniques and the main areas in which they have made a major impact. This volume, which we expect to be the first of aseries, presents reviews of selected specialized areas by renowned experts. It makes no attempt to be comprehensive; it emphasizes a body of related applications to polymeric, biological, and colloidal systems, and to critical phenomena. The well-known monographs on dynamic light scattering by Berne and Pecora and by Chu were published almost ten years ago. They provided comprehensive treatments of the general principles of dynamic light scat­ tering and gave introductions to a wide variety of applications, but natu­ rally they could not treat the new applications and advances in older ones that have arisen in the last decade. The new applications include studies of interacting particles in solution (Chapter 4); scaling approaches to the dynamics of polymers, including polymers in semidilute solution (Chapter 5); the use of both Fabry-Perot interferometry and photon correlation spectroscopy to study bulk polymers (Chapter 6); studies of micelIes and microemulsions (Chapter 8); studies of polymer gels (Chapter 9).