Related papers: Charge symmetry broken complex coacervation
We present a minimal model to study liquid phase separation in a fixed pH ensemble. The model describes a mixture composed of macromolecules that exist in three different charge states and have a tendency to phase separate. We introduce the…
Complex coacervation, known as the liquid-liquid phase separation of solutions with oppositely charged polyelectrolytes, has attracted substantial interest in recent years. We study the effect of the charge regulation (CR) mechanism on 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…
Phase separation in charged systems may involve the replacement of critical points by microphase separated states, or charge-density-wave states. A density functional theory for highly charged colloids at low ionic strength is developed to…
A new type of phase separation in the polyelectrolyte solutions consisting of several types of charged macromolecules differing in their degree of ionization is predicted via a general thermodynamic consideration. We show that even a small…
We propose a framework to study the spatio-temporal evolution of liquid-liquid phase separation of weak polyelectrolytes in ionic solutions. Unlike strong polyelectrolytes, which carry a fixed charge, the charge state of weak…
We report that binary dispersions of like-charged colloidal particles with large charge asymmetry but similar size exhibit phase separation into crystal and fluid phases under very low salt conditions. This is unexpected because the…
We study phase equilibria in a minimal model of charge-regulated polymer solutions. Our model consists of a single polymer species whose charge state arises from protonation-deprotonation processes in the presence of a dissolved acid, whose…
We generalize the concept of charge regulation of ionic solutions, and apply it to complex fluids with mobile macro-ions having internal non-electrostatic degrees of freedom. The suggested framework provides a convenient tool for…
We consider the phase separation in an asymmetrically charged lipid bilayer membrane consisting of neutral and negatively charged lipids that are in contact with in/out ionic solutions having different ionic strengths. The two asymmetric…
Phase separation drives the formation of biomolecular condensates in cells, which comprise many components and sometimes possess multiple phases. The equilibrium physics of phase separation is well understood, but many components in…
We present a theory for phase-separated liquid coacervates with salt, taking into account spatial heterogeneities and interfacial profiles. We find that charged layers of alternating sign can form around the interface while the bulk phases…
Uncompensated charges do not occur in Nature and any local charge should be a result of charge separation. Dissociable chemical groups at interfaces in contact with ions in solution, whose chemical equilibrium depends both on short-range…
We theoretically study mixtures of chemically-interacting particles, which produce or consume a chemical to which they are attracted or repelled, in the most general case of many coexisting species. We find a new class of active phase…
Globular proteins as well as recently synthesized colloids engineered with differently charged surface regions have in common a reduced bonding valence and a complex interaction pattern dominated by like-charge attraction and…
Mixing solutions of oppositely charged macromolecules can result in liquid-liquid phase separation into a polymer-rich coacervate phase and a polymer-poor supernatant phase. Here we show that charge asymmetry in the constituent polymers can…
We study the thermodynamic behavior of nonpolar liquid mixtures in the vicinity of curved charged objects, such as electrodes or charged colloids. For small enough charge on the object, or equivalently, small potential, the…
Structural correlations between colloids in a binary mixture of charged and uncharged spheres are calculated using computer simulations of the primitive model with explicit microions. For aqueous suspensions in a solvent of large dielectric…
Phase separation plays an role in determining the self-assembly of biological and soft-matter systems. In biological systems, liquid-liquid phase separation inside a cell leads to the formation of various macromolecular aggregates. The…
A density functional theory for a macroion suspension is examined, where the excess free energy corresponds to the macroion self energy arising from the polarisation of the supporting electrolyte solution. This is treated within a…