Aggregation Behavior of Amphiphilic PAMAM-Based Hyperbranched Polymer in the Presence of Conventional Small Molecular Surfactants

Abstract

Hyperbranched polymer composed of G1 polyamidoamine (PAMAM) and branched with poly (propylene oxide) (PPO)-block-poly (ethylene oxide) (PEO) was investigated to interact with sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and di-dodecyl dimethyl ammonium bromide (DDAB), respectively, by the methods of turbidity titration and analysis, rheology measurements, dynamic light scattering (DLS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). It was noticeable that even at extremely low concentration of SDS (even far from the critical micelle concentration (cmc)), the system exhibits high turbidity, indicating that SDS molecules can insert into cationic amine groups and hydrophobic microenvironment, resulting in the formation of polymer-SDS complexes with large size. At the SDS concentration range of below 0.1 mM, the turbidity and cloud point (CP) temperature of the system keep almost invariable, mostly because of the repulsion between SDS molecules and the complexes. And, therefore, the size of the mixed aggregates retains almost constant. In the case of vesicle system of DDAB, the aggregates are in the size of 100 nm - 200 nm and 500 nm - 3000 nm at the concentrations of 30 mM and 100 mM, respectively. However, in the mixture of hyperbranched polymer with DDAB, by comparison, the size is smaller in a binary system than that of in DDAB system. So it is reasonable to infer that DDAB molecules remove from multilamellar vesicles of DDAB to the hydrophobic microenvironment of hyperbranched polymer aggregates, with the addition of the hyperbranched polymer. It leads to the destruction of the gel-like conformation in DDAB system, leading to the shear thinning of the mixture and, as a result, the viscoelastic character of the system is lost in a large degree.