Determination of refractive index, size, and concentration of nonabsorbing colloidal nanoparticles from measurements of the complex effective refractive index

Opt Lett. 2014 Feb 1;39(3):559-62. doi: 10.1364/OL.39.000559.

Abstract

We describe a method for obtaining the refractive index (RI), size, and concentration of nonabsorbing nanoparticles in suspension from relatively simple optical measurements. The method requires measuring the complex effective RI of two dilute suspensions of the particles in liquids of different refractive indices. We describe the theoretical basis of the proposed method and provide experimental results validating the procedure.