Related papers: Counterion-controlled phase equilibria in a charge…
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…
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…
Liquid-liquid phase separation has emerged as one of the important paradigms in the chemical physics as well as biophysics of charged macromolecular systems. We elucidate an equilibrium phase separation mechanism based on charge regulation,…
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…
The conditions of multi-phase equilibrium are solved for generic polydisperse systems. The case of multiple polydispersity is treated, where several properties (e.g. size, charge, shape) simultaneously vary from one particle to another. By…
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…
Individual colloids often carry a charge as a result of the dissociation (or adsorption) of weakly-ionized surface groups. The magnitude depends on the precise chemical environment surrounding a particle, which in a concentrated dispersion…
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…
Many materials containing colloids or polymers are polydisperse: They comprise particles with properties (such as particle diameter, charge, or polymer chain length) that depend continuously on one or several parameters. This review…
The behavior of polyelectrolytes and polyampholytes in semi-dilute solutions is investigated theoretically. Various statistical charge distributions along the polyelectrolyte chains are considered: smeared, annealed, permuted and quenched.…
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 a solution of long polyanions (PA) with shorter polycations (PC) and focus on the role of Coulomb interaction. A good example is solutions of DNA and PC which are widely studied for gene therapy. In the solution, each PA attracts…
We present a theory for the equilibrium structure of polyelectrolyte solutions. The main element is a simple, new optimization scheme that allows theories such as the random phase approximation (RPA) to handle the harsh repulsive forces…
Dilute solutions of strongly charged polymer electrolytes undergo, upon addition of multivaltent salt to the solutions, a phase transition from extended conformations to collapsed or bundled ones. Upon further addition of salt they…
We study the effects of charge-regulated acid/base equilibrium on the swelling of polyelectrolyte gels, by considering a combination of the Poisson-Boltzmann theory and a two-site charge-regulation model based on the Langmuir adsorption…
We adapt the Edwards-Muthukumar theoretical framework for a single polymer chain to investigate the interplay between proton binding and counterion condensation for poly-acids. We find that changes to pH enable non-monotonic transitions…
We study charge regulation of colloidal particles inside aqueous electrolyte solutions. To stabilize colloidal suspension against precipitation, colloidal particles are synthesized with either acidic or basic groups on their surface. In…
Similarly-charged polymers in solution, known as polyelectrolytes, are known to form aggregated structures in the presence of oppositely charged counterions. Understanding the dependence of the equilibrium phases and the dynamics of the…
We study the conformational properties of charged polymers in a solvent in the presence of structural obstacles correlated according to a power law $\sim x^{-a}$. We work within the continuous representation of a model of linear chain…
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…