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Polymer, Vol.40, No.21, 5741-5749, 1999
Interactions between the nonionic surfactant and polyacrylamide studied by light scattering and viscometry
Light scattering and viscometric measurements were made on ternary mixtures of high molecular weight polyacrylamide (PAM), and the nonionic surfactant, Triton X-100 (TX-100) in aqueous solution. The binary solutions of polymer and surfactant in aqueous media were also studied. In the ternary system, the solution viscosity and translational diffusion coefficients were determined at 30 degrees C in terms of (a) the surfactant concentration at fixed PAM concentration, (b) the PAM concentration at fixed surfactant concentration, and (c) the PAM molecular weight. The surfactant concentration was varied by five orders of magnitude, the mean diffusion coefficient decreased slightly at first until reaching a minimum and then rose toward an asymptotic value which was identical to that of a single micelle. Near the cmc, the binding of the surfactant onto a polymer chain induced a slight chain expansion, but surprisingly the specific viscosity diminished. DLS shows a component owing to free micelle diffusion at concentrations above 1 mM of TX-100. This indicates the saturation point of binding between PAM and TX-100. Different molecular weights of PAM interacted with the surfactant quite similarly.