Probing the dynamics of turbid colloidal suspensions using differential dynamic microscopy

Few techniques can reliably measure the dynamics of colloidal suspensions or other soft materials over a wide range of turbidities. Here we systematically investigate the capability of Differential Dynamic Microscopy (DDM) to characterise particle dynamics in turbid colloidal suspensions based on brightfield optical microscopy. We measure the Intermediate Scattering Function (ISF) of polystyrene microspheres suspended in water over a range of concentrations, turbidities, and up to 4 orders of magnitude in time-scales. These DDM results are compared to data obtained from both Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) and Two-colour Dynamic Light Scattering (TCDLS). The latter allows for suppression of multiple scattering for moderately turbid suspensions. We find that DDM can obtain reliable diffusion coefficients at up to 10 and 1000 times higher particle concentrations than TCDLS and standard DLS, respectively. Additionally, we investigate the roles of the four length-scales relevant when imaging a suspension: the sample thickness L, the imaging depth z, the imaging depth of field DoF, and the photon mean free path ℓ. More detailed experiments and analysis reveal the appearance of a short-time process as turbidity is increased, which we associate with multiple scattering events within the imaging depth of the field. The long-time process corresponds to the particle dynamics from which particle-size can be estimated in the case of non-interacting particles. Finally, we provide a simple theoretical framework, ms-DDM, for turbid samples, which accounts for multiple scattering.