Rheology of Laponite-scleroglucan hydrogels

tBoth Laponite and scleroglucan can find several applications in various fields (from industrial to biomed-ical one) in virtue of their peculiar features and rheological properties displayed in aqueous phases.Structural states of Laponite dispersions strongly depend on concentration and ionic strength. Whenattractive and repulsive interparticle interactions are so effective that they lead to arrested states (attrac-tive gel or repulsive glass), the rheological behavior of the dispersion undergoes a sharp transition, fromquasi-Newtonian to markedly shear thinning and viscoelastic. Conversely, scleroglucan solutions grad-ually change to weak gels with increasing polymer concentration. The present work is concerned withaqueous Laponite-scleroglucan mixed systems, obtained according to different preparation modes, andis aimed at examining how much the content and proportion of both components affect the viscoelasticand flow properties of the mixed system