Electron Microscopy of Xanthan Topology and Strandedness of the Ordered and Disordered Conformation英文文献.pdfVIP

Chapter 7 Electron Microscopy of Xanthan Topology and Strandedness of the Ordered and Disordered Conformation Bjørn T. Stokke, Arnljot Elgsaeter, and Olav Smidsrød Division of Biophysics and Division of Biotechnology, Norwegian Institute of Technology, University of Trondheim, N—7034 Trondheim, Norway Xanthan is a polyelectrolytic exopolysaccharide of potential interest for polymer flooding in high salinity and high temperature reservoirs . Optical rotation dispersion measure­ ments reveal that xanthan undergoes a temperature- or salt-dri ­ ven cooperative order-disorder conformational transition . Here we present electron micrographs of vacuum-dried and heavy-metal replicated dilute aqueous xanthan solutions . In the ordered conformation xanthan appears as highly elongated molecules with uniform thickness . Observed weight average contour length combined with experimentally determined molecular weight yield a mass per unit length of (1900±200) Dalton/nm for xanthan from several differen t sources . This finding i s consistent with xanthan being double-stranded in the ordered conformation . Electron micrographs of xanthan under disordering conditions show a mixture of species ranging from purely single - and perfectly matched double-stranded species , to double-stranded chains branching into their two subchains as well as differen t degrees of mismatched chains . The usefulness of xanthan in polymer flooding for