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Simulational study of anomalous tracer diffusion in hydrogels

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Abstract

In this article, we analyze different factors that affect the diffusion behavior of small tracer particles (as they are used, e.g., in fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS)) in the polymer network of a hydrogel and perform simulations of various simplified models. We observe, that under certain circumstances the attraction of a tracer particle to the polymer network strands might cause subdiffusive behavior on intermediate time scales. In theory, this behavior could be employed to examine the network structure and swelling behavior of weakly crosslinked hydrogels with the help of FCS.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the financial support provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) as part of the SPP 1259 “Intelligente Hydrogele”.

The authors want to thank Georg Fytas, Alexander Grosberg, Owen Hickey, Felix Höfling, Peter Kos̆ovan, Ralf Metzler, Ricardo Raccis, and Roland Winkler for helpful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Computerphysik, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 27, 70569, Stuttgart, Germany

    Fatemeh Tabatabaei, Olaf Lenz & Christian Holm

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  1. Fatemeh Tabatabaei
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  2. Olaf Lenz
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  3. Christian Holm
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Correspondence to Olaf Lenz.

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Tabatabaei, F., Lenz, O. & Holm, C. Simulational study of anomalous tracer diffusion in hydrogels. Colloid Polym Sci 289, 523–534 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00396-011-2393-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00396-011-2393-0

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