Electric Birefringence Relaxation Method for the Analysis of Polyelectrolyte Gel.

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Recently, much interest has been focused on the thermoreversible gel of polysaccharides because of its physicochemical aspect of the gelation mechanism and the application as intelligent materials. Sol-gel transition of k-carrageenan has been studied extensively as a model of polysaccharide gel. However, there are few reports concerning the network structure of the gel because of the lack of appropriate method.In this study, we applied the electric birefringence relaxation method to investigate the network structure of the polysaccharide gel. So far, the electric birefringence method has been mainly used for properties of polymer solutions, but its application to gel has never been examined.We construct the equipment in order to observe the weak signal of the orientational motion of the structural component of the gel. When the rectangular electric pulse is applied to the Kerr cell, the electric birefringence signal from the gel was observed. The observation of the electric birefringence signal from the gel was the first time. The signal was found to consist of two processes, which correspond to the orientational motion of the junction zone and the deformation of the whole network structure of the gel. The size of the junction zone can be estimated by analyzing the relaxation process of the electric birefringence signal. These results indicate the possibility of the electric birefringence method to investigate the network structure of the gel.