Bridging the divide between the high- and low-solid analyses in the gelatin/k-carrageenan mixture

Over the past few years, a considerable amount of work has been done in several laboratories on the measurement of structural properties of low-solid biopolymer mixtures or high-solid materials of a single biopolymer in the presence of co-solute. The main objective of this work has been to establish a correlation between the two types of systems and extend it to a binary mixture in a high-solid environment. In doing so, it employed well-characterized k-carrageenan and gelatin samples in an aqueous preparation or in the presence of glucose syrup and sucrose. The phase behavior of the composite gel was ascertained using small-deformation dynamic oscillation, differential scanning calorimetry, and light microscopy. Experimental observations were built into polymer blending laws that argued for an explicit phase topology and distribution of solvent between the two networks. A working hypothesis was formulated and applied to high-solid mixtures thus identifying phase or state transitions in the time/temperature function. This led to the development of a mechanical glass transition temperature as the threshold of two distinct molecular processes governing the "rubber-to-glass" transformation. A stage was reached at which the predictions of the hypothesis were found to be in good agreement with the experimental development of viscoelasticity in the high-solid k-carrageenan/gelatin mixture ranging from the rubbery plateau and the transition region to the glassy state.