Discrimination of Sol and Gel states in an aging clay suspension

•Multiplicative cascade model was employed to characterize Sol-Gel transition.•Evolution of scattered light intensity from charged colloidal particles is studied.•During transition, an obvious change in PDF of the light scattering was discovered.•In the Sol state, the value of non-Gaussian parameter is larger than weak-Gel.

The dynamical scattered light intensity and multiplicative cascade model was employed to characterize the anisotropic charged colloidal particles suspension during the so-called Sol-Gel transition. Generally we looked for finding a criterion to distinguish the properties of Sol and Gel states systematically. The probability density function (PDF) of the light scattering intensity shows an obvious change with proceeding of the sample aging process (during of gelation state). Our results confirmed that in the so-called Sol state, the value of non-Gaussian parameter, λw2, as a function of time is larger than that of for weak-Gel or in coexistence Sol-Gel state. The number of cascades in the weak-Gel is smaller than the rest of states. In addition, we found out a deviation from Kolmogorov-Obukhov hypothesis concerning the linear dependance of λw2 to the logarithm of scale.

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