Related papers: Understanding long-range opposite charge repulsion…
The electrostatic double layer force is key to determining the stability and self-assembly of charged colloids and many other soft matter systems. Fully understanding the attractive force between two like-charged surfaces remains a great…
Understanding overcharging and charge inversion is one of the long-standing challenges in soft matter and biophysics. To study these phenomena, we employ the modified Gaussian renormalized fluctuation theory, which allows for the…
The study of the electrical double layer lies at the heart of colloidal and interfacial science. The standard mean-field Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) theory is incapable of modeling many phenomena originated from ion correlation. An important…
Screening of a strongly charged macroion by oppositely charged colloidal particles, micelles, or short polyelectrolytes is considered. Due to strong lateral repulsion such multivalent counterions form a strongly correlated liquid at the…
We have directly observed reversal of the polarity of charged surfaces in water upon the addition of tri- and quadrivalent ions using atomic force microscopy. The bulk concentration of multivalent ions at which charge inversion reversibly…
We predict the nature (attractive or repulsive) and range (exponentially screened or long-range power law) of the electrostatic interactions of oppositely charged and planar plates as a function of the salt concentration and surface charge…
As is well known in electrolyte theory, electrostatic fields are attenuated by the presence of mobile charges in the solution. This seems to limit the possibility of an electrostatic repulsion model of biological interactions such as cell…
We show that charge inversion, i.e. interfacial charges attracting counterions in excess of their own nominal charge, is a general effect that takes place in most charged systems next to aqueous solutions with multivalent ions and identify…
Mean-field theory is used to model polyelectrolyte adsorption and the possibility of overcompensation of charged surfaces. For charged surfaces that are also chemically attractive, the overcharging is large in high salt conditions,…
It is known that in a water solution with multivalent counterions (Z-ions), two likely charged macroions can attract each other due to correlations of Z-ions adsorbed on their surfaces. This "correlation" attraction is short-ranged and…
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 complexation of a polyelectrolyte with an oppositely charged spherical macroion is studied for both salt free and salty solutions. When a polyelectrolyte winds around the macroion, its turns repel each other and form an almost…
Using molecular dynamics simulations we examine the effective interactions between two like-charged rods as a function of angle and separation. In particular, we determine how the competing electrostatic repulsions and…
We study the distribution of multivalent counterions next to a dielectric slab, bearing a quenched, random distribution of charges on one of its solution interfaces, with a given mean and variance, both in the absence and in the presence of…
We scrutinize the effect of polyvalent ions on polymer-DNA interactions. We extend a recently developed test charge theory to the case of a stiff polymer interacting with a DNA molecule in an electrolyte mixture. The theory accounts for…
We study the effective interaction mediated by strongly coupled Coulomb fluids between dielectric surfaces carrying quenched, random monopolar charges with equal mean and variance, both when the Coulomb fluid consists only of mobile…
Despite decades of intensive studies, the effective interactions between strongly charged colloids still remain elusive. Here we show that a strongly charged surface with a layer of condensed counter- ions behaves effectively as a…
Poisson-Boltzmann theory is the cornerstone for soft matter electrostatics. We provide novel exact analytical solutions to this non-linear mean-field approach, for the diffuse layer of ions in the vicinity of a planar or a cylindrical…
A simple model is presented to calculate the potential of mean force between a polyion and a multivalent counterion inside a polyelectrolite solution. We find that under certain conditions the electrostatic interactions can lead to a strong…
The charge inversion phenomenon is studied by molecular dynamics simulations, focusing on size and valence asymmetric salts, and a threshold of surface charge density for charge inversion. The charge inversion criteria by the…