Raja Anand, Wilfert Philipp K, Picken Stephen J
Advanced Soft Matter, Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology, van der Maasweg 9, 2629 HZ Delft, The Netherlands.
Environmental Biotechnology, Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology, van der Maasweg 9, 2629 HZ Delft, The Netherlands.
Polymers (Basel). 2024 Oct 14;16(20):2894. doi: 10.3390/polym16202894.
A theoretical approach is presented to quantify the effect of ionic strength on the swelling and shrinkage of the hydrodynamic coil size of a generic biopolymer. This was conducted in view of extraction methods that often utilize acids and alkali combinations and, therefore, invariably impact the levels of salt found in commercially available biopolymers. This approach is supplemented by intrinsic viscosity measurements for the purpose of validation across a variety of biopolymer architectures, type of functionalization, as well as the quoted molar mass. By accurately capturing the magnitude of change in the coil size, it is discussed how a biopolymer coil size is far more sensitive to changes in the ionic strength than it is to the molar mass (or contour length) itself. In turn, it is highlighted why the current characterization strategies that make use of weight-averaged molar mass are prone to errors and cannot be used to establish structure-property relationships for biopolymers. As an alternative, the scope of developing an accurate understanding of coil sizes due to changes in the "soft" interactions is proposed, and it is recommended to use the coil size itself to highlight the underlying structure-property relationships.
本文提出了一种理论方法，用于量化离子强度对一般生物聚合物流体力学线圈尺寸膨胀和收缩的影响。考虑到提取方法通常使用酸和碱的组合，因此不可避免地会影响市售生物聚合物中的盐含量，故而开展此项研究。为了在各种生物聚合物结构、功能化类型以及所引用的摩尔质量范围内进行验证，该方法辅以特性粘度测量。通过准确捕捉线圈尺寸的变化幅度，讨论了生物聚合物线圈尺寸对离子强度变化的敏感度远高于对摩尔质量（或轮廓长度）本身的敏感度。进而强调了为何当前利用重均摩尔质量的表征策略容易出错，且不能用于建立生物聚合物的结构-性能关系。作为一种替代方法，提出了准确理解由于“软”相互作用变化而导致的线圈尺寸的研究范围，并建议使用线圈尺寸本身来突出潜在的结构-性能关系。
