English

Polyelectrolyte-Compression Forces between Spherical DNA Brushes

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

Optical tweezers are employed to measure the forces of interaction within a single pair of DNA-grafted colloids in dependence of the molecular weight of the DNA-chains, and the concentration and valence of the surrounding ionic medium. The resulting forces are short-range and set in as the surface-to-surface distance between the colloidal cores reaches the value of the brush height. The measured force-distance dependence is analyzed by means of a theoretical treatment based on the compression of the chains on the surface of the opposite-lying colloid. Quantitative agreement with the experiment is obtained for all parameter combinations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0710.0303,
  title  = {Polyelectrolyte-Compression Forces between Spherical DNA Brushes},
  author = {Kati Kegler and Martin Konieczny and Gustavo Dominguez-Espinoza and Christof Gutsche and Matthias Salomo and Friedrich Kremer and Christos N. Likos},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0710.0303},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures, 1 table; manuscript submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:24:39.442Z