The CONTIN algorithm and its application to determine the size distribution of microgel suspensions

Abstract

We review a powerful regularization method, known as CONTIN, for obtaining the size distribution of colloidal suspensions from dynamic light scattering data. We show that together with the so-called L-curve criterion for selecting the optimal regularization parameter, the method correctly describes the average size and size distribution of microgel suspensions independently characterized using small-angle neutron scattering. In contrast, we find that when using the default regularization process, where the regularizer is selected via the "probability to reject" method, the results are not as satisfactory. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.