The structure of dilute polymer colloid suspensions as seen by the reverse Monte Carlo method

Studies of dilute colloid suspensions based on interaction potentials provide radial distribution functions with first peaks appearing at 5–10 times larger distances than the diameter of the particles. In contrast, the present study shows results where other peaks appear before the peak termed the main one. We evaluated the radial distribution functions of four different light scattering experiments using the reverse Monte Carlo method. This method does not need any input potential and applies an inverse Fourier transformation, since the direct transformation of a structure factor to a radial distribution function is not possible in the case of light scattering experiments. We found that contacting particles can play an important role in determining many properties of colloids, despite their small contribution to the integrated number of neighbours.