Thermal diffusion of aqueous solution of acetylated dextran: The effect of hydrophobicity using optical beam deflection technique

•The hydrophobicity has an influence on thermal diffusion behavior of dextran solution.•The Soret (ST), diffusion (D), and thermal diffusion coefficient (DT), increase nonlinearly with temperature.•The temperature behavior of ST and DT of Ac-DEXs is not influenced by acetylation degree.•The ST linearly decrease as increase of particle size for dextran.•The ST scales linearly with the particle volume for Ac-DEX samples.