I have four hydrogels. Out of four two are transparent which take 8-10 hours to form. Other two are opaque which are formed after 3-4 hours. How to explain the transparency and opacity of these hydrogels?
What kind of hydrogel? physical or chemical? the conditions of the preparations?
In my case it had to do with the kinetics of gelation, when using high amount of initiator (for chemical cross-linking) the gelation was too fast giving non-homogeneous opaque hydrogel.
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Thank you for your answer. I will go through the reference.
The hydrogels are formed due to charge-assisted hydrogen bonding interaction between gelator and binders,i.e due to non-covelent interactions. For preparing the hydrogels, I first prepared the aqueous solutions of gelator and then added different binder molecules into the aqueous solutions of gelator. Then the mixtures were kept at room temperature. Out of four hydrogels, two are formed after keeping the aqueous mixture undisturbed for 8-10 hours. These gels are transparent. other two gels are formed within 3-4 hours and these are opaque.
I would try the same formula of the one formed in 3-4 hours but using less concentration of the binder molecule to see if the dynamics of the gelation has to do with the opacity of the hydrogel.
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