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

Small-Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) are two crucial techniques to probe, respectively, the static and the dynamic structure factor of soft matter systems. SANS provides the time-averaged structure of soft materials from a few nm to hundreds of nm [1, 2] while DLS [3] supplies their microscopic dynamics on time scales of nanoseconds and above and allows one to derive their hydrodynamic size [4]. However, usually SANS and DLS measurements are performed separately, in different laboratories, on different samples and at different times, missing the clear benefit that simultaneous DLS-SANS measurements on soft materials would bring from the synergy between the two techniques. Here we report on a new compact and portable DLS-SANS apparatus that allows one to simultaneously measure both the microscopic dynamics (through DLS) and the static structure factor (through SANS) on the same sample.