Universal growth of microdomains and gelation transition in agar hydrogels

Investigations were carried out on aqueous sols and gels of agar (extracted from red seaweed Gelidiella acerosa) to explore the growth of microdomains en route to gelation. Isothermal frequency sweep studies on gel samples revealed master plots showing power-law dependence of gel elastic modulus, |G*|, on oscillation frequency, omega as |G*| approximately omegan, independent of temperature, with 0.5Tg). The S(q,t) behavior close to the gel transition point (Tg approximately (38+/-3 degrees C determined from rheology) followed a stretched exponential function: S(t)=A exp(-t/ts)beta. The beta factor increased from 0.25 to 1 as the gel temperature approached 25 degrees C from Tg, and relaxation time, ts, showed a peak at T approximately 30 degrees C. The SLS data (in the sol state) suggested the scaling of scattered intensity, Is(q) approximately epsilon(-gamma) (epsilon=(T/Tg-1), T>Tg) with gamma=0.13+/-0.03, and the presence of two distinct domains characterized by a Guinier regime (low q) and a power-law regime (high q). Close to and above Tg (+2 degrees C), IS(q) scaled with q as Is(q) approximately q(-alpha) with alpha=2.2+/-0.2, which decreased to 1.4+/-1 just below Tg (-2 degrees C), implying a coil-helix transition for 0.2% (w/v) and 0.3% (w/v) samples. For a 0.01% sample, alpha=3.5+/-0.5 which indicated the presence of spherical microgels.