Dilational surface rheology of polymer solutions

The review concerns main achievements in dilational rheology of polymer adsorption films at the gas/liquid interfaces reported in the last fifteen years. The theoretical foundations of methods of surface rheology and the key results obtained in studies of solutions of amphiphilic nonionic polymers, polyelectrolytes, proteins and their complexes with low-molecular-mass surfactants are discussed. Interest in the surface dilational rheology is mainly caused by a small number of available experimental methods for investigation of the surface of liquids, by the fact that traditional methods of measurement of the surface tension that are widely used in studies of solutions of low-molecular-mass surfactants provide little information when applied to polymer solutions owing to very slow establishment of equilibrium as well as by weak dependence of the surface tension on the polymer concentration. Progress in the surface rheology is driven by the recent studies of the stability of foams and emulsions that demonstrated a key role of the dilational surface rheological properties in the dynamics of liquid-phase disperse systems.
The bibliography includes 191 references.