Scaling analysis on the linear viscoelasticity of cellulose 1-ethyl-3-methyl imidazolium acetate solutions

Many researches have studied the viscoelasticity of cellulose/ionic liquid solutions through the conventional scaling rules which assume the monodisperse polymer. However, they are not suitable for cellulose since natural polymers such as cellulose have molecular weight distribution. In this paper, dynamic rheological behaviors of 1-ethyl-3-methyl imidazolium acetate solutions dissolving three kinds of celluloses were measured in a large range of concentrations from the dilute regime to the entangled semidilute regime at 25°C. We compared the viscosity-fitting scaling (Chen et al., 2011) and the phenomenological scaling to replace the conventional scaling. Two scaling methods were applied to the linear viscoelasticity of the cellulose solutions with different molecular weights and molecular weight distributions. The results of each scaling were compared by the superposition of master curves obtained from each scaling. The effects of molecular weight distribution were observed by the dependence of the scaling factors on concentration and molecular weight of cellulose.