Laboratory measurements of light scattering data for polymer-modified nanoparticles to determine diffusion coefficient and hydrodynamic radius

This dataset contains estimates of the mutual diffusion coefficient and hydrodynamic radius of polymer-modified silica nanoparticles determined via light scatter characteristics. Seven species of poly(caprolactone) (PCL) and hyperbranched poly(glycidol) (HPG) modified nanoparticles were exposed to laboratory-weathered oil collected from the leaking Deepwater Horizon well. Dynamic light scattering (DLS) analysis measured the fluctuations in the scattering intensity of the samples, analyzed by the intensity autocorrelation function. The slope of the plot of the decay rate of the autocorrelation function versus the square of the scalar magnitude of the scattering vector yields the mutual diffusion coefficient. The estimate of the diffusion is then used to calculate the hydrodynamic size using the Stokes-Einstein relation.