Rheological Properties of Template Polymerization Polyacrylamide Aqueous Solutions

In this work, the aqueous solution rheology properties of both partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) and the template copolymer (TPAM) synthesized from acrylic acid (AA) and acrylamide (AM) were investigated using an advanced rheometer and viscometer. The results were correlated with the corresponding molecular structures of HPAM and TPAM, which were characterized by high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance. It was found that the thickening ability of TPAM is much stronger than that of HPAM due to its unique microblocky structure, while the viscosity of TPAM was more sensitive to shear rate. Furthermore, the effect of polymer concentration was also tested in an oscillation shear mode. It showed that the characteristic relaxation time of TPAM was much higher than that of HPAM at the high concentrations. The research on salt-resistance properties showed that the viscosity retention of TPAM was similar to HPAM at the same NaCl concentration. But, unexpectedly, at the same CaCl₂ concentration the viscosity retention of TPAM was much lower than that of HPAM, indicating a poor divalent salt-resistance property.