Two-point microrheology and diffusing wave spectroscopy

Abstract

The dynamics of charged and hard-sphere silica colloidal suspensions are measured using diffusing wave spectroscopy and are interpreted by the Generalized Stokes–Einstein Relation (GSER). At high concentration, the resulting moduli are in good qualitative agreement with bulk rheology, including the frequency response, but are higher by a quantitative factor. We show that the “two-point” GSER, which derives from the correlated motion of the colloidal particles, provides a better quantitative agreement between bulk and microrheology. The two-point GSER applies generally when the average scattering vector sampled by the multiple scattering events corresponds to a length scale greater than the scatterer diameter. We discuss applications for characterizing colloid interactions by measuring the high-frequency moduli of suspensions and extend the two-point analysis to tracer particle microrheology measurements of a semiflexible biopolymer network.