Universal growth of microdomains and gelation transition in agar hydrogels.

Investigations were carried out on aqueous sols and gels of agar (extracted from red seaweed Gelidiella acerosa) to explore the growth of microdomains en route to gelation. Isothermal frequency sweep studies on gel samples revealed master plots showing power-law dependence of gel elastic modulus, |G*|, on oscillation frequency, omega as |G*| approximately omegan, independent of temperature, with 0.5<or=n<or=1.4. Dynamic structure factor data from sol samples comprised of a double-exponential relaxation function, S(q,t)=A exp(-DSq2t)+B exp(-DLq2t) where DS and DL are the two translational diffusion coefficients and q is the scattering wave vector. This yielded hydrodynamic radii (from DS), with RS varying from approximately 20 nm (for sol) to 250 nm (at gelation point). The second hydrodynamic radius (from DL) obtained was RL in the range of approximately 200-500 nm (for sol) to approximately 1000 nm (at 38 degrees C, gelation point). These data could be universally fitted to RS approximately epsilon(-3/5) and RL approximately epsilon-1/3 (epsilon=(T/Tg-1), T>Tg). The S(q,t) behavior close to the gel transition point (Tg approximately (38+/-3 degrees C determined from rheology) followed a stretched exponential function: S(t)=A exp(-t/ts)beta. The beta factor increased from 0.25 to 1 as the gel temperature approached 25 degrees C from Tg, and relaxation time, ts, showed a peak at T approximately 30 degrees C. The SLS data (in the sol state) suggested the scaling of scattered intensity, Is(q) approximately epsilon(-gamma) (epsilon=(T/Tg-1), T>Tg) with gamma=0.13+/-0.03, and the presence of two distinct domains characterized by a Guinier regime (low q) and a power-law regime (high q). Close to and above Tg (+2 degrees C), IS(q) scaled with q as Is(q) approximately q(-alpha) with alpha=2.2+/-0.2, which decreased to 1.4+/-1 just below Tg (-2 degrees C), implying a coil-helix transition for 0.2% (w/v) and 0.3% (w/v) samples. For a 0.01% sample, alpha=3.5+/-0.5 which indicated the presence of spherical microgels.