Liposome size analysis by dynamic/static light scattering upon size exclusion-/field flow-fractionation.

The aim of the current study was to analyse the particle size distribution of a liposome dispersion, which contained small egg phosphatidylcholine vesicles and had been prepared by high-pressure homogenisation, by various size analysis techniques. Such liposomes were chosen since they can be looked at as a prototype of drug nano-carriers. Three sub-micron particle size analysis techniques were employed: (1) fixed-angle quasi-elastic laser light scattering or photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS), (2) size exclusion chromatographic (SEC) fractionation with subsequent (off-line) PCS size-analysis and quantification of the amount of particles present in the sub-fractions, and (3) field-flow-fractionation coupled on-line with a static light scattering and a refractive index (RI)-detector.

Assessing the accuracy of routine photon correlation spectroscopy analysis of heterogeneous size distributions.

The aim of the current study was to investigate the ability of a fixed-angle routine photon correlation spectrometer (PCS) to resolve bimodal size distributions. The focus was on dispersions consisting of a majority of smaller and a minority of bigger particles. Monodisperse latex beads of sizes from 21 to 269 nm were measured first as single-size dispersions and then with various binary blends.