Light scattering simulation for the characterization of sintered silver nanoparticles

Light scattering is a useful tool in optical particle characterization. It can help to understand the nature of single particles as well as systems or clusters of particles; information about particle sizes, materials or shapes can be gathered. In this paper we investigate the application of light scattering studies to the analysis of a sintering process of silver nanoparticles. For this we first simulate the scattering behavior of two silver spheres. Then we assume sintering between them, leading to a single particle with a concave, peanut-like shape. We approximate this shape by a Cassini-oval. For light scattering studies we use an advanced T-matrix algorithm, the Nullfield Method with Discrete Sources. This method proved to be capable of simulating light scattering by concave particles. To make sure that the calculated data are correct we do comparative simulations using the Discrete Sources Method.