Microrheological approach for the viscoelastic response of gels

Abstract

In this paper I present a simple and self-consistent framework based on microrheology that allows one to obtain the mechanical response of viscoelastic fluids and gels from the motion of probe particles immersed on it. By considering a non-markovian Langevin equation, I obtain general expressions for the mean-squared displacement and the time-dependent diffusion coefficient that are directly related to the memory kernels and the response function, and which allow one to obtain estimates for the complex shear modulus and the complex viscosity of the material. The usefulness of such approach is demonstrated by applying it to describe experimental data on chemically cross-linked polyacrylamide through its sol-gel transition.