Light scattering studies on solutions of charged rod-like fd-virus at very low ionic strength

Light scattering experiments are reported on semidilute, aqueous solutions of rod-like fd-virus (length L=880 nm, molecular weight 16.4×106 dalton) near the overlap concentration c*=1 particle/length3. In solutions of very low ionic strength, a liquid-like structure with a significant intensity maximum of the elastically scattered light is observed. The structure is caused by the electrostatic interaction of the charged rods. It vanishes, when enough salt is added so that the interaction potential is screened on the interparticle distance. The scattering vector qmax of the maximum scales with the fd concentration as c1/2. The experimental values for qmaxL fit very well to Monto Carlo simulations if the concentration is scaled to c*. Dynamic light scattering of the fd solutions reflects the influence of the static structure factor in the same way as observed for interacting spherical macromolecules: The first cumulant of the field correlation function divided by the square of the scattering vector shows a behavior reciprocal to that of the static structure factor.