Slow dynamics and time-composition superposition in gels of cellulose nanocrystals

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Morlet-Decarnin, Lise, Divoux, Thibaut, Manneville, Sebastien
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2022
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author Morlet-Decarnin, Lise
Divoux, Thibaut
Manneville, Sebastien
author_facet Morlet-Decarnin, Lise
Divoux, Thibaut
Manneville, Sebastien
contents Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are rodlike biosourced colloidal particles used as key building blocks in a growing number of materials with innovative mechanical or optical properties. While CNCs form stable suspensions at low volume fractions in pure water, they aggregate in the presence of salt and form colloidal gels with time-dependent properties. Here, we study the impact of salt concentration on the slow aging dynamics of CNC gels following the cessation of a high-shear flow that fully fluidizes the sample. We show that the higher the salt content, the faster the recovery of elasticity upon flow cessation. Most remarkably, the elastic modulus $G'$ obeys a time-composition superposition principle: the temporal evolution of $G'$ can be rescaled onto a universal sigmoidal master curve spanning 13 orders of magnitude in time for a wide range of salt concentrations. Such a rescaling is obtained through a time-shift factor that follows a steep power-law decay with increasing salt concentration, until it saturates at large salt content. These findings are robust to changes in the type of salt and in the CNC content. We further show that both linear and nonlinear rheological properties of CNC gels of various compositions, including, e.g., the frequency-dependence of viscoelastic spectra and the yield strain, can be rescaled based on the sample age along the general master curve. Our results provide strong evidence for universality in the aging dynamics of CNC gels, and call for microstructural investigations during recovery as well as theoretical modelling of time-composition superposition in rodlike colloids.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2201_07506
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Slow dynamics and time-composition superposition in gels of cellulose nanocrystals
Morlet-Decarnin, Lise
Divoux, Thibaut
Manneville, Sebastien
Soft Condensed Matter
Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are rodlike biosourced colloidal particles used as key building blocks in a growing number of materials with innovative mechanical or optical properties. While CNCs form stable suspensions at low volume fractions in pure water, they aggregate in the presence of salt and form colloidal gels with time-dependent properties. Here, we study the impact of salt concentration on the slow aging dynamics of CNC gels following the cessation of a high-shear flow that fully fluidizes the sample. We show that the higher the salt content, the faster the recovery of elasticity upon flow cessation. Most remarkably, the elastic modulus $G'$ obeys a time-composition superposition principle: the temporal evolution of $G'$ can be rescaled onto a universal sigmoidal master curve spanning 13 orders of magnitude in time for a wide range of salt concentrations. Such a rescaling is obtained through a time-shift factor that follows a steep power-law decay with increasing salt concentration, until it saturates at large salt content. These findings are robust to changes in the type of salt and in the CNC content. We further show that both linear and nonlinear rheological properties of CNC gels of various compositions, including, e.g., the frequency-dependence of viscoelastic spectra and the yield strain, can be rescaled based on the sample age along the general master curve. Our results provide strong evidence for universality in the aging dynamics of CNC gels, and call for microstructural investigations during recovery as well as theoretical modelling of time-composition superposition in rodlike colloids.
title Slow dynamics and time-composition superposition in gels of cellulose nanocrystals
topic Soft Condensed Matter
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.07506