Nonionic surfactant and temperature effects on the viscosity of hydrophobically modified hydroxyethyl cellulose solutions

Nonionic surfactant and temperature effects on the viscosity of hydrophobically modified hydroxyethyl cellulose (HMHEC) solutions are investigated experimentally. Weak shear thickening at intermediate shear rates takes place for HMHEC at moderate concentrations and becomes more significant at lower temperatures. While this amphiphilic polymer in surfactant-free solution does not turn turbid by heating to 95 degrees C, its mixture with nonionic surfactant shows a lower cloud point temperature than does a pure surfactant solution. For some mixture cases, phase separation takes place at temperatures as low as 2 degrees C. The drop of cloud point temperature is attributed to an additional attractive interaction between mixed micelles via chain bridging. With increasing temperature, the viscosity of an HMHEC-surfactant mixture in aqueous solution first decreases but then rises considerably until around the cloud point. The observed viscosity increase can be explained by the interchain association because of micellar aggregation.     

Determination of hydrogen peroxide by utilizing a cobalt(II)hexacyanoferrate-modified glassy carbon electrode as a chemical sensor

A mixed-valence cluster of cobalt(II)hexacyanoferrate possesses an electron transfer property and is suitable for the development of an effective hydrogen peroxide detection scheme. The characteristics of cobalt(II)hexacyanoferrate have been studied using both elemental analysis and infrared spectra, confirming the structure is Co[Fe^II(CN)₆]. The cobalt(II)hexacyanoferrate-modified electrode exhibits a rapid response (t_95% - 6.5 s) to the injection of 5.0 × 10⁻⁵ M hydrogen peroxide. The linearity of the response is up to 1.1 × 10⁻³ M (correlation coefficients is 0.999). The sensitivity of this modified electrode is 11.8 μA/mM-mm². The detection limit of cobalt(II)hexacyanoferrate-modified electrode to hydrogen peroxide is 6.25 × 10⁻⁸ M. The current chemical sensor modified with Co[Fe^II(CN)₆] has better sensitivity than previous ones. The modified glassy carbon electrode shows no interference from ascorbic acid, uric acid, acetaminophen, 1,4-dihydroxyquinone, dopamine at the 2.0 × 10⁻⁴ M level and polyamines at 5.0 × 10⁻⁵ M level.