On the importance of hydrodynamic interactions in polyelectrolyte electrophoresis
Abstract
The effect of hydrodynamic interactions on the free-solution electrophoresis of polyelectrolytes is investigated with coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. By comparing the results to simulations with switched-off hydrodynamic interactions, we demonstrate their importance in modelling the experimentally observed behaviour. In order to quantify the hydrodynamic interactions between the polyelectrolyte and the solution, we present a novel way to estimate its effective charge. We obtain an effective friction that is different from the hydrodynamic friction obtained from diffusion measurements. This effective friction is used to explain the constant electrophoretic mobility for longer chains. To further emphasize the importance of hydrodynamic interactions, we apply the model to end-labeled free-solution electrophoresis.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0808.2606,
title = {On the importance of hydrodynamic interactions in polyelectrolyte electrophoresis},
author = {Kai Grass and Christian Holm},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0808.2606},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
15 pages, 7 figures; accepted for publication in J. Phys.: Condens. Matter