Related papers: Structure Formation due to Antagonistic Salts
A highly-charged spherical colloid in a salt-free environment exerts such a powerful attraction on its counterions that a certain fraction condenses onto the surface of a particle. The degree of condensation depends on the curvature of the…
The distribution of ions at the air/water interface plays a decisive role in many natural processes. It is generally understood that polarizable ions with low charge density are surface-active, implying they sit on top of the water surface.…
In this paper, we study electrostatic properties between two similar or oppositely charged surfaces immersed in an electrolyte solution by using mean-field approach accounting for solvent polarization and non-uniform size effect. Applying a…
The forces between charged macromolecules, usually given in terms of osmotic pressure, are highly affected by the intervening ionic solution. While in most theoretical studies the solution is treated as a homogeneous structureless…
We study ion pair dissociation in water at ambient conditions using a combination of classical and ab initio approaches. The goal of this study is to disentangle the sources of discrepancy observed in computed potentials of mean force. In…
Charged colloidal particles trapped at an air--water interface are well known to form an ordered crystal, stabilized by a long ranged repulsion, the details of this repulsion remain something of a mystery, but all experiments performed to…
Ionic electro-active polymer (Nafion for example) can be used as sensor or actuator. To this end, a thin film of the water-saturated material is sandwiched between two electrodes. Water saturation causes a quasi-complete dissociation of the…
We argue that the kosmotropes remain strongly hydrated in the vicinity of a hydrophobic surface, while the chaotropes lose their hydration shell and can become adsorbed to the interface. The mechanism of adsorption is still a subject of…
In our recent works, based on the structural studies on water and interfacial water (topmost water layer at the solute/water interface), hydration free energy is derived and utilized to investigate the physical origin of hydrophobic…
Molecular dynamics simulations of aqueous NaCl, KCl, NaI, and KI solutions are used to study the effects of salts on the properties of the liquid/vapor interface. The simulations use the models which include both charge transfer and…
Interfaces are a most common motif in complex systems. To understand how the presence of interfaces affect hydrophobic phenomena, we use molecular simulations and theory to study hydration of solutes at interfaces. The solutes range in size…
We study the structure of complexes formed between ionic surfactants (SF) and a single oppositely charged polyelectrolyte (PE) chain. For our computer simulation we use the ``primitive'' electrolyte model: while the polyelectrolyte is…
Hydrophobic interactions provide driving forces for protein folding, membrane formation, and oil-water separation. Motivated by information theory, the poorly understood nonpolar solute interactions in water are investigated. A simple…
We develop of a field-theoretic approach for the treatment of both the non-local and the non-linear response of structured liquid dielectrics. Our systems of interest are composed of dipolar solvent molecules and simple salt cations and…
While individual water molecules adsorb strongly on a talc surface (hydrophilic behavior), a droplet of water beads up on the same surface (hydrophobic behavior). To rationalize this dichotomy, we investigate the influence of the…
The free energy of ion solvation can be decomposed into enthalpic and entropic contributions. This helps to understand the connection between the dielectric properties and the underlying forces. We present a simple linear-response model of…
Complexation in symmetric solutions of oppositely charged polyelectrolytes is studied theoretically. We include polyion crosslinking due to formation of thermoreversible ionic pairs. The electrostatic free energy is calculated within the…
The composition of the protoplanetary disc is linked to the composition of the host star, where a higher overall metallicity of the host star provides more building blocks for planets. However, most planet formation simulations only link…
We studied the interaction between salts and surfactants on the water surface using heterodyne-detected vibrational sum frequency generation (HD-VSFG) spectroscopy. We used sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) as a prototype surfactant system at 75…
In solution, electrically like-charged particles can experience a strong and long-ranged attraction that leads to the formation of stable, slowly reorganizing clusters. The attractive force underpinning this spontaneous organization process…