Related papers: Electrostatic Depletion Force in Complex Coacervat…
Depletion forces and macromolecular crowding govern the structure and function of biopolymers in biological cells and the properties of polymer nanocomposite materials. To isolate and analyze the influence of polymer shape fluctuations and…
The rapid charging and/or discharging of electrochemical cells can lead to localized depletion of electrolyte concentration. This depletion can significantly impact the system's time dependent resistance. For systems with porous electrodes,…
The adsorption of flexible and highly charged polyelectrolytes onto oppositely charged planar surfaces is investigated by means of Monte Carlo simulations. The effect of image forces stemming from the dielectric discontinuity at the…
Soft matter materials, such as polymers, membranes, proteins, are often electrically charged. This makes them water soluble, which is of great importance in technological application and a prerequisite for biological function. We discuss a…
Industrial as well as natural aggregation of fine particles is believed to be associated with electrostatics. Yet like charges repel, so it is unclear how similarly treated particles aggregate. To resolve this apparent contradiction, we…
Polyelectrolytes under confinement are crucial for energy storage and for understanding biomolecular functions. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we analyze a polyelectrolyte solution confined between two oppositely charged planar…
Self-assembly of matter in solution generally relies on attractive interactions that overcome entropy and drive the formation of higher-order molecular and particulate structures. Such interactions play key roles in a variety of contexts,…
The interaction between polyelectrolyte and ionic surfactant is of great importance in different areas of chemistry and biology. In this paper we present a theory of polyelectrolyte ionic-surfactant solutions. The new theory successfully…
When polyelectrolyte-neutral block copolymers are mixed in solutions to oppositely charged species (e.g. surfactant micelles, macromolecules, proteins etc), there is the formation of stable supermicellar aggregates combining both…
Depletion forces play a role in the compaction and de-compation of chromosomal material in simple cells but it remains debatable whether they are sufficient to account for chromosomal collapse. We present coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
Entropic forces in colloidal suspensions and in polymer-colloid systems are of long-standing and continuing interest. Experiments show how entropic forces can be used to control the self-assembly of colloidal particles. Significant advances…
Understanding the electrodes' surface morphology influence on the ions' distribution is essential for designing the supercapacitors with enhanced energy density characteristics. We develop a model for the structure of electrolytes near the…
Supercapacitors have been attracting significant attention as promising energy storage devices. However, the voltage window limitation associated with electrolyte solutions has hindered the improvement of their capacitance. To address this…
Studies of the thermodynamics of complex coacervation of pairs of symmetric, strongly ionizable, oppositely charged polyelectrolyte chains are abundant. To generalize such understanding to asymmetric chain lengths and variable ionizability…
In mixtures of colloids and nonadsorbing polyelectrolytes, a Donnan potential arises across the region between surfaces that are depleted of polyelectrolyte and the rest of the system. This Donnan potential tends to shift the…
The formation of (bio)molecular condensates via liquid-liquid phase separation in cells has received increasing attention, as these coacervates play important functional and regulatory roles within biological systems. However, the majority…
We study the effective interaction between differently charged polyelectrolyte-colloid complexes in electrolyte solutions via Monte Carlo simulations. These complexes are formed when short and flexible polyelectrolyte chains adsorb onto…
The interaction force between likely charged particles/surfaces is usually repulsive due to the Coulomb interaction. However, the counterintuitive like-charge attraction in electrolytes has been frequently observed in experiments, which has…
The crystallization of proteins or colloids is often hindered by the appearance of aggregates of low fractal dimension called gels. Here we study the effect of electrostatics upon crystal and gel formation using an analytic model of hard…
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,…