Discontinuous Crossover between Fast and Slow Kinetics at the Volume Phase Transition in Poly-N-isopropylacrylamide Gels.

  • Okajima Takaharu
    Department of Life Science, Graduate School of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, <BR> Nagatsuta-cho, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8501, Japan
  • Hirotsu Shunsuke
    Department of Life Science, Graduate School of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, <BR> Nagatsuta-cho, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8501, Japan
  • Nishio Kazufumi
    Department of Life Science, Graduate School of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, <BR> Nagatsuta-cho, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8501, Japan
  • Harada Ichiro
    Department of Life Science, Graduate School of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, <BR> Nagatsuta-cho, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8501, Japan

Bibliographic Information

Published
2000
DOI
  • 10.1143/jjap.39.l875
Publisher
The Japan Society of Applied Physics

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Description

The kinetics of the volume phase transition in N-isopropylacrylamide gels has been studied as a function of crosslinker concentration. The shrinking kinetics at the transition is extremely slow in gels with a standard composition which have been used widely in various experiments. A discontinuous crossover from slow to much faster kinetics were observed in both high- and low-crosslinker-concentration regions, where the characteristic time of the shrinking process changes abruptly by two to four orders of magnitude with a minute change of the crosslinker concentration. In spite of these marked changes in the kinetics, no anomaly was observed in the degree of equilibrium swelling in these regions. A mechanism leading to sudden changes in kinetics is discussed in terms of an inhomogeneous network structure which is dependent on crosslink density.

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