抄録
Effects of ethylene glycol (EG) on the thermal and rheological properties of aqueous agarose gels were examined in order to clarify the relation between the structure of gels and the functional properties. The endothermic peak accompanying gel-to-sol transition in heating DSC curves shifted to lower temperatures with increasing mole fraction of EG. The storage Young's modulus E' and the endothermic enthalpy ΔH of agarose gels as a function of EG mole fraction showed a maximum at a certain EG mole fraction. It was suggested that the region of the ordered structure increased with increasing EG below a certain EG mole fraction, and decreased with increasing EG above that mole fraction. Those phenomena were discussed on the basis of a reel-chain model and a zipper model approach. Values of E' and ΔH may increase with increasing the number of junction zones or molecular zippers, which don't affect so much on the gel-to-sol transition temperature.
