Aging of Thermoreversible Gel of Associating Polymers

K Singh and Y Rabin, MACROMOLECULES, 53, 3883-3890 (2020).

DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.0c00258

We performed Langevin dynamics simulations of amphiphilic polymers that contain strongly associating stickers connected by long soluble chain segments. We explored the aging of a thermoreversible gel, which is cross-linked by aggregates (clusters) of the stickers, and observed a dramatic increase of their lifetime with aging. We find that the observed aging is the result of structural reorganization of the network: the number of cross-links decreases with time as small clusters disintegrate and their stickers are reabsorbed by large clusters that grow and become more stable by forming additional intramolecular associations between their stickers.

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