Résumé
Nanomaterials are of interest in numerous industrial applications. Most of their properties are size dependent. In this chapter, the use of Taylor dispersion analysis (TDA) for nanomaterial size characterisation is presented. TDA is based on the dispersion of a solute zone in an open-tube under Poiseuille-like flow. TDA is an absolute (no calibration is required), simple, and rapid method for the determination of the diffusion coefficient or the hydrodynamic radius from angstroms to submicrons, using only a few nanolitres of sample. The principle of the method, the treatment and corrections of the experimental data, the conditions of validity, the comparison between single and double-detection points, the average values of hydrodynamic radius determined in the case of polydisperse samples, the comparison with dynamic light scattering, and examples of applications from the literature are presented.