The Equilibrium and Kinetics of Uncharged and Polyelectrolyte Gels

Krishnan, Ananya (2016) The Equilibrium and Kinetics of Uncharged and Polyelectrolyte Gels. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

PDF (MS dissertation of Ananya Krishnan (11MS029)) Ananya-Krishnan_11MS029_MSthesis.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (822kB)

Abstract

Understanding the equilibrium and kinetics of swelling of polyelectrolyte gels has immense application in industrial and bio medical field. In this work I studied the kinetics of swelling of polyelectrolyte gels with fixed degree of ionization by comparing the results obtained from two different methods, namely, the Bulk Modulus Method (BMM) - which uses the classical definition of stress and an explicit bulk modulus as a parameter and the Stress RelaxationMethod (SRM) - which uses a phenomenological expression of stress as a function of polymer density and charge as an input to the constitutive equation. The same study was conducted for the two different geometries, a slab like gel with swelling only along the thinnest direction and a spherical gel along the radial direction. Specifically, we wanted to explore the competing effects of hydrophobicity, electrostatic repulsion, and counterion pressure on the swelling of polyelectrolyte gels and its effective bulk modulus. In order to study the kinetics of swelling, understanding of the equilibriumproperties of both uncharged and polyelectrolyte gels was necessary. In summary, this thesis deals first with a review of the equilibrium properties of polymer gels, and then study of a few specific aspects of swelling of polyelectrolyte gels in cartesian and spherical geometries.

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