Size and Distribution
Knowledge on particle size and particle size distribution is fundamental in designing disperse systems. Many technical applications do not allow too big, or too small, particles to be present.
It is important to realize that many of the instruments do use algorithms to calculate the particle size distribution. For this reason one does not necessarily obtain the same answer when determining the size distribution for the same sample but with different techniques.
Light scattering techniques
Dynamic light scattering, Mie scattering and light diffraction are three light scattering techniques that complement each other in the sense that the first cover small particles and the latter larger particles. Having all three techniques in house thus enables the complete determination of very polydisperse samples.
Microscopy techniques
In microscopy techniques, be it optical or electron microscopy, one counts the particles one by one. This has the advantage in that you get what you see but also the disadvantage in just that. The problem is that only a small fraction of the sample is analyzed and that fraction might not be a good representative of the sample. The images produced can be subjected to computer image analysis.