Macromolecules, Vol.31, No.20, 7023-7029, 1998
Forces between liquid interfaces in the presence of polymer: Concentration, solvent, and mass effects
We report surface force measurements; between emulsion droplets and flat air-water interfaces (foam films) in the presence of an aqueous statistical copolymer solution (of poly(vinyl alcohol) and poly(vinyl acetate)) in the dilute regime. We observe a repulsive force that is exponentially decaying and that cannot be attributed to electrostatic double-layer repulsion. The qualitative behavior of the repulsive force weakly depends on the polymer concentration, while its range is a function of the polymer average molecular weight that is varied from 10 000 to 155 000. The force is drastically affected when the temperature approaches the Theta point (going from gl,od to Theta conditions). We show that the force range scales as the polymer coil radius of gyration. These results are compared with theoretical predictions.