The Gelation Studies. of N-Methylolated PAAms in Aqueous Media

The Gelation Studies. of N-Methylolated PAAms in Aqueous Media

The gelation phenomena of N-methylolated PAAm (M-PAAm) in aqueous media was studied. The critical gelation concentration (CGC) was very close to the calculated $C^*$ of the scaling theory. But the CGC of lower MW M-PAAm deviated from $C^*$ due to contamination of small molecules. We propose that the CGC is the close packing configuration of polymer molecules in solution. The experimental results of the gelation of M-PAAm/PAAm mixture proved that the close packing configuration is essential to make a gel. We calculated the minimum quantity of M-PAAm to make M-PAAm/PAAm mixture a gel by using the close packing configuration. We used a lattice model.