THEME: "Enlightening the recent advances in Biopolymers & Polymer Chemistry"
South China University of Technology, China
Title: When a cold-gel mixed with a thermo-gel: attractive or reject?
Prof L Yu is currently Principal Scientist, Institute of Chemistry, Henan Academy of Sciences, and Professor in South China University and Technology. Former Director of Sino-Singapore International Joint Research Institute, He received his PhD from Monash University, Australia. He used to work in CSIRO, Australia as Principal Scientist for 18 years. He has had more than 180 papers published and citation time is more than 15000 (h-index 61). He has been selected as a Fellow of Royal Australian Chemical Institute in 2002, and currently been pointed as Editorial Board of 8
What will happen when a cold-gel meet with a thermo-gel: attractive or reject? It is a complex issue depending on various factors. The research on this issue has both scientific and commercial importance. In this presentation, the various factors including critical concentration gel points of each gel, miscibility, temperature, pH value, shear strength, annealing conditions as well as compatibilizer, effect on their phase diagraphs, miscibility, compatibility, and interface were investigated and discussed. The characterizations of this system mainly include rheometer, FTIR-synchrotron mapping, and SEM with frozen stage, and various microscopies with dye technologies etc. The blends of gelatin (GA) and hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose (HPMC) is a typical example of mixture of a cold-gel with a thermo-gel. The figures show the morphologies observed under Fluorescence micrographs of GA/HPMC blends. Lift: effect of blending ratio; right: effect of pH value with same blending ratio, in which the light zones correspond to the fluorescence of the labelled protein (covalently stained by FITC) and the dark ones to the polysaccharide rich regions. The results indicated the morphologies of the blends depend not only concentration ratio but also other factors.