Estimating viscosity and polarity in the microenvironment of polymeric gels-introducing a microviscosity parameter

Estimation of micropolarity and microfluidity at the water-polymer interface is important in understanding the physicochemical behavior of polymeric gels in the context of their wide biomedical applications. In this work, fluorescence studies of 8-Anilino-1-naphthalene-sulphonate (ANS) were used to introduce a new microviscosity parameter. Z and E-T(30) solvent polarity scales were found to work well in resolving the polarity differences in various polyacrylamide gel compositions. A microviscosity parameter tau(eta) is an easy-to-estimate parameter that was used to follow the changes in microviscosity with changes in polymer composition. The microviscosity parameter could efficiently estimate the increase of microviscosity with increase in the crosslinker, as well as initiator concentrations at the same monomer concentration.