Determination of polymer size distribution by combination of quasielastic light scattering and band transport: Evaluation of the effect of diffusion

In this paper we report a computer simulation study of the effect of diffusion on the size distribution obtained by combining light scattering with isokinetic band sedimentation or electrophoresis. We find that, under typical experimental conditions, the method yields reasonably accurate size distributions for samples of particles greater than 10 nm radius. However, caution should be exercised in interpreting the results for smaller particles, for which the distortion due to diffusion can be considerable.