Aqueous micellar solutions of a triblock copolymer of ethylene oxide and 1,2-butylene oxide, B12E114B12. Scaling the viscoelasticity of fluid and gel

Abstract

Aqueous solutions of triblock copolymer B12E114B12 have been characterised rheometrically over the concentration range 10–40 wt.% and at several temperatures. Through micellar bridging the micellar interaction is weakly attractive. A wide variety of linear viscoelastic behaviours are observed, and it is shown that they can be superposed onto a master curve of the type developed by Trappe and Weitz (Phys. Rev. Lett., 2000, 85, 449) for conventional colloidal suspensions of weakly-attractive particles.