Light scattering studies of aggregation phenomena

We present recent results in the field of colloidal aggregation. We first present static light scattering data of aggregation in intermediate regimes between RLCA and DLCA. In particular, we show that working with dense solutions, new and unexpected features are observed. In fact, we measure intensity distributions strongly peaked at q≠0, which scale according to the same scaling law typical of spinodal decomposition. Furthermore, we show that by only varying the initial conditions, the appearance of the peak can be completely inhibited, and that this result provides new information about the intermediate regimes. Finally, we present depolarized dynamic light scattering data from aggregates grown in the RLCA regime. We show that using optically anisotropic spheres it is possible to determine in a unique experiment all the features characterizing an aggregation process. Moreover, we present evidence that the asymptotic form expected for the cluster mass distribution is attained in the very early phases of the aggregation process