Inherent viscosity

In polymer science, inherent viscosity is the ratio of the natural logarithm of the relative viscosity of a polymer to its mass concentration.

Inherent viscosity is defined as

$\eta _{inh}={\frac {\ln \eta _{rel}}{c}}$

where c is the mass concentration of the polymer (g/dL) and $\eta _{rel}$ is the relative viscosity, which is defined as

$\eta _{rel}={\frac {\eta }{\eta _{s}}}$

where $\eta$ is the viscosity of the solution and $\eta _{s}$ is the viscosity of the solvent.

The unit of inherent viscosity is dL/g.