New Optical Setup for In Situ DLS-SANS Measurements on Soft Matter

Small-Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) and DynamicLight Scattering (DLS) are two crucial techniquesto probe, respectively, the static and the dynamic structurefactor of soft matter systems. SANS provides thetime-averaged structure of soft materials from a few nmto hundreds of nm [1, 2] while DLS [3] supplies theirmicroscopic dynamics on time scales of nanoseconds andabove and allows one to derive their hydrodynamic size[4]. However, usually SANS and DLS measurements areperformed separately, in different laboratories, on differentsamples and at different times, missing the clear benefitthat simultaneous DLS-SANS measurements on softmaterials would bring from the synergy between the twotechniques. Here we report on a new compact and portableDLS-SANS apparatus that allows one to simultaneouslymeasure both the microscopic dynamics (throughDLS) and the static structure factor (through SANS) onthe same sample.