Gel Point

The gel point marks the transition of an amorphous material from a liquid to a solid due to gelation. This transition is caused by the growth of connected structures in the material, which are associated with molecular or supramolecular motion over large distances. Before reaching the gel point, the material is able to flow, whereas beyond the gel point, stress needs to exceed the yield value to allow flow. Depending on the connectivity mechanism, the wide variety of gels are often divided into two classes, chemical gels and physical gels, which are related to chemical gel point and physical gel point. For many applications, it is necessary to know when the liquid-solid transition occurs in polymer processing such as adhesives, absorbents, porous catalysts, vibration dampers, membranes, colloidal glasses.

• Chemical gel point

Chemically cross-linked polymers belong to network gels. Molecules cross-link into large clusters through covalent bonds. The polymer reaches the gel point at the critical extent of the cross-linking reaction. At the gel point, the molecular weight distribution is infinitely broad as molecules range from the smallest unreacted oligomers to infinite clusters. The liquid polymer before the gel point is called a sol because it is soluble in good solvents. The solid polymer beyond the gel point, called a gel is not soluble even in a good solvent.

• Physical gel point

Physical gels are capable of forming sample-spanning supramolecular structures. In analogy to chemical gelation, physical gelation is defined by the growth of physically connected aggregates and the physical gel point is reached when the correlation length of molecular (or supramolecular) motion diverges to infinity.

Alfa Chemistry is passionate about gel point research. No matter what problem you have, please feel free to contact us.

Please kindly note that our products and services are for research use only.

Online Inquiry

Name

Phone

Email *

Services & Products of Interest *

Gel Point

Project Description

Verification Code *

SUBMIT