Dynamic Light Scattering Microrheology Reveals Multiscale Viscoelasticity of Polymer Gels and Precious Biological Materials.

ABSTRACT: The development of experimental techniques capable of probing the viscoelasticity of soft materials over a broad range of time scales is essential to uncovering the physics that governs their behavior. In this work, we develop a microrheology technique that requires only 12 μL of sample and is capable of resolving dynamic behavior ranging in time scales from 10^-6 to 10 s. Our approach, based on dynamic light scattering in the single-scattering limit, enables the study of polymer gels and other soft materials over a vastly larger hierarchy of time scales than macrorheology measurements. Our technique captures the viscoelastic modulus of polymer hydrogels with a broad range of stiffnesses from 10 to 10⁴ Pa. We harness these capabilities to capture hierarchical molecular

SUBMITTER: Krajina BA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5746858 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature