Gelation Kinetics-Structure Analysis of pH-triggered Low Molecular Weight Hydrogelators.
Vasudevan Lakshminarayanan, Cindhuja Chockalingam, Eduardo Mendes, Jan H van Esch
Author Information
Vasudevan Lakshminarayanan: Advanced Soft Matter, Department of Chemical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Van der Maasweg 9, 2629HZ, Delft, The Netherlands.
Cindhuja Chockalingam: Advanced Soft Matter, Department of Chemical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Van der Maasweg 9, 2629HZ, Delft, The Netherlands.
Eduardo Mendes: Advanced Soft Matter, Department of Chemical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Van der Maasweg 9, 2629HZ, Delft, The Netherlands.
Jan H van Esch: Advanced Soft Matter, Department of Chemical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Van der Maasweg 9, 2629HZ, Delft, The Netherlands.
Properties such as shear modulus, gelation time, structure of supramolecular hydrogels are strongly dependent on self-assembly, gelation triggering mechanism and processes used to form the gel. In our work we extend reported rheology analysis methodologies to pH-triggered supramolecular gels to understand structural insight using a model system based on N-N' Dibenzoyl-L-Cystine pH-triggered hydrogelator and Glucono-δ-Lactone as the trigger. We observed that Avrami growth model when applied to time-sweep rheological data of gels formed at lower trigger concentrations provide estimates of fractal dimension which agree well compared with visualization of the microstructure as seen via Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy, for a range of gelator concentrations.
