Gelation is promoted by gelling agents.
Gelation can occur either by physical linking or by chemical crosslinking. While the physical gels involve physical bonds, chemical gelation involves covalent bonds. The first quantitative theories of chemical gelation were formulated in the 1940s by Flory and Stockmayer. Critical percolation theory was successfully applied to gelation in 1970s. A number of growth models (diffusion limited aggregation, cluster-cluster aggregation, kinetic gelation) were developed in the 1980s to describe the kinetic aspects of aggregation and gelation.