Conformational characteristics of cellulose sulfoacetate chains and their comparison with other cellulose derivatives.

An amphiphilic cellulose derivative the sodium salt of cellulose sulfoacetate was studied in a wide range of molecular masses by the methods of molecular hydrodynamics. Molecular masses were determined from sedimentation-diffusion analysis. The cross and general scaling relationships were established in the studied range of molecular masses for intrinsic viscosity and coefficients of velocity sedimentation and translational diffusion, and molecular masses. The conformational characteristics of the chains, such as the persistence length, hydrodynamic diameter were established using the Multi-HYDFIT suite applied to the entire set of experimental data. The features of using the Multi-HYDFIT suite for calculation of molecular mass per unit length of linear chains are discussed. The results obtained for this cellulose sulfoacetate series have been compared with literature data for other water-soluble cellulose derivatives using normalized scaling concept of intrinsic viscosity data. It has been shown that water-soluble cellulose derivatives form a community, which is characterized by virtually identical equilibrium sizes of rigid chains in aqueous solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]