This Highlight by Silvia Corezzi and colleagues reviews a series of recent numerical studies that evidence the analogies between reversible and irreversible gelation in small functionality particles. These studies also investigate the crossover from chemically controlled to diffusion-controlled aggregation. The authors suggest that these results will be a useful guide for the interpretation of the kinetic in real systems. They use an example of measuring the extent of reaction in epoxy-resin systems to show this.
Chemical and physical aggregation of small-functionality particles
Soft Matter, 2012, 8, 11207. DOI: 10.1039/c2sm26112j (free to read for a short time)
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