Kinetics of bond formation in crosslinked gelatin gels

TL;DR

This paper investigates the kinetics of gel formation in crosslinked gelatin solutions, revealing how two distinct time scales govern the process and can be tuned by adjusting crosslinking probabilities.

Contribution

It combines experimental data with Monte Carlo simulations to elucidate the role of two key time scales in gelatin gelation, offering a method to control gelation kinetics.

Findings

Two characteristic time scales are identified and linked to specific bond formation processes.

The ratio of these time scales controls the overall gelation kinetics.

Adjusting bridge formation probability allows fine-tuning of gelation speed.

Abstract

In chemical crosslinking of gelatin solutions, two different time scales affect the kinetics of the gel formation in the experiments. We complement the experimental study with Monte Carlo numerical simulations of a lattice model. This approach shows that the two characteristic time scales are related to the formation of single bonds crosslinker-chain and of bridges between chains. In particular their ratio turns out to control the kinetics of the gel formation. We discuss the effect of the concentration of chains. Finally our results suggest that, by varying the probability of forming bridges as an independent parameter, one can finely tune the kinetics of the gelation via the ratio of the two characteristic times.