Viscosity Enhancement in Polymer Solutions: Influence of Alkyl Chain Length and Concentration

The relationship between solution concentration and viscosity is depicted in Figure 7 (a). The experiment was conducted at a temperature of 25℃. The figure illustrates that the viscosity of all polymer solutions increases as the polymer concentration rises. Notably, the PAM-C22 solution exhibits higher viscosity compared to the other polymer solutions across all concentrations. As the concentration increases, the viscosity advantage becomes more pronounced. At a polymer solution concentration of 1%, a clear direct proportionality is observed between the solution viscosity and the length of the alkyl chain in the hydrophobic monomer of the polymer. When compared to the PAM solution, the viscosity increases by 5.0%, 11.9%, 24.9%, and 60.2% from PAM-C8 to PAM-C22, respectively.