Related papers: Heterogeneous morphology and dynamics of polyelect…
Interplay between counterion-mediated interaction and stiffness inherent to polymer chain can bring substantial complexity to the morphology and dynamics of polyelectrolyte brush condensates. Trivalent counterions induce collapse of…
Polyelectrolyte (PE) brushes have ubiquitous applications as surface modifiers which regulate various structural and dynamic properties. Here, we apply a continuous-space self-consistent field theory to study the structural heterogeneity in…
Polyelectrolyte (PE) brushes are widely used in biomaterials and nanotechnology to regulate surface properties and interactions. Here, we apply the electrostatic correlation augmented self-consistent field theory to investigate the…
We investigate the effect of counterion fluctuations in a single polyelectrolyte brush in the absence of added salt by systematically expanding the counterion free energy about Poisson-Boltzmann mean field theory. We find that for strongly…
A model of rod-like polyelectrolyte brushes in the presence of monovalent and multivalent counterions but with no added-salt is studied using Monte Carlo simulation. The average height of the brush, the histogram of rod conformations, and…
Protein brushes not only play a key role in the functionality of neurofilaments but also have wide applications in biomedical materials. Here, we investigate the effect of ionic strength on the morphology of protein brushes using a…
Understanding the effect of inhomogeneity on the charge regulation and dielectric properties, and how it depends on the conformational characteristics of the macromolecules is a long-standing problem. In order to address this problem, we…
In this paper we perform molecular dynamics simulations of a spherical polyelectrolyte brush and counterions in a salt-free medium. The dielectric discontinuity on the grafted nanoparticle surface is taken into account by the method of…
Polyelectrolyte brushes consist of a set of charged linear macromolecules each tethered at one end to a surface. An example is the glycocalyx which refers to hair-like negatively charged sugar molecules that coat the outside membrane of all…
Brushes formed by arm-tethered starlike polyelectrolytes may exhibit internal segregation into weakly and strongly extended populations (stratified two-layer structure) when strong ionic intermolecular repulsions induce stretching of the…
Understanding the behavior of charged complex fluids is crucial for a plethora of important industrial, technological, and medical applications. Using coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations, here we investigate the properties of a…
We have studied the response of surface properties and swelling behaviors of annealed poly(2-vinyl pyridine) (P2VP) brushes covalently tethered to solid planar surfaces to divalent salts in aqueous solutions at varied pH values. Results…
In biology experiments, oligonucleotide microarrays are contacted with a solution of long nucleic acid (NA) targets. The hybridized probes thus carry long tails. When the surface density of the oligonucleotide probes is high enough, the…
Modeling ion correlations in inhomogeneous polymers and soft matters with spatially varying ionic strength or dielectric permittivity remains a great challenge. Here, we develop a new theory which systematically incorporates electrostatic…
Effective electrostatic interactions between colloidal particles, coated with polyelectrolyte brushes and suspended in an electrolyte solvent, are described via linear response theory. The inner cores of the macroions are modeled as hard…
Properties of polyelectrolytes in tetravalent salt solutions are intensively investigated by a coarse-grained model. The concentration of salt and the size of tetravalent counterions are found playing a decisive role on chain properties. If…
In the present work, we study the equilibrium conformations of linear polyelectrolytes tethered onto a spherical, oppositely charged core in equilibrium with an ionic reservoir of fixed concentration. Particular focus is placed on the…
We formulate a self-consistent field theory for polyelectrolyte brushes in the presence of counterions. We numerically solve the self-consistent field equations and study the monomer density profile, the distribution of counterions, and the…
We investigate the effects of crowding on the conformations and assembly of confined, highly charged, and thick polyelectrolyte brushes in the osmotic regime. Particle tracking experiments on increasingly dense suspensions of colloids…
By molecular dynamics simulation, we study the charge inversion phenomenon of a rod macroion in the presence of polyelectrolyte counterions. We simulate electrophoresis of the macroion under an applied electric field. When both counterions…