2008/11/17 by L. Zulian, Laura Zulian, Barbara Ruzicka +6
Chemistry · Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Adsorption, diffusion, and thermodynamic properties of materials #Clay minerals and soil interactions #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Soil and Unsaturated Flow #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0811.2709
13 pages, 6 figures, manuscript accepted for publication on Philosophical Magazine
openalex publication_date 2008/11/17 · arxiv created 2008/11/18 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Clay-polymer dispersions in aqueous solutions have attracted a great interest in recent years due to their industrial applications and intriguing physical properties. Aqueous solutions of bare Laponite particles are known to age spontaneously from an ergodic state to a non ergodic state in a time varying from hours to months depending on Laponite concentration. When a polymer species like Polyethylene Oxide (PEO) is added to the solution, it weakly adsorbs on clay particle surfaces modifying the effective interaction potential between Laponite particles. A dynamic light scattering study, varying polymer concentration at fixed polymer molecular weight (Mw=200.000 g/mol), has been performed in order to understand the effect of polymer on the aging dynamics of the system. The results obtained show that arresting phenomena between clay particles are hindered if PEO is added and consequently the aging dynamics slows down with increasing PEO concentration. This process is possibly due to the progressive coverage of the clay surface by polymers that grow with increasing PEO concentration and may lead to steric stabilization.