Related papers: Polyelectrolyte gels in poor solvent: Equilibrium …
Polyelectrolyte gels are a very attractive class of actuation materials with remarkable electronic and mechanical properties with a great similarity to biological contractile tissues. They consist of a polymer network with ionizable groups…
Using a continuum description, we account for fluctuations in the ionic solvent surrounding a Gaussian, charged chain and derive an effective short-ranged potential between the charges on the chain. This potential is repulsive at short…
A robust non-Newtonian fluid model of dilute polyelectrolyte solutions is derived from kinetic theory arguments. Polyelectrolyte molecules are modeled as finitely elongated nonlinear elastic dumbbells, where effective charges (interacting…
In this chapter polyelectrolyte intelligent gels are examined along three broad lines. The effects of different physical, chemical and biological stimuli on gels response are analysed and mechanisms of response are outlined. The broad range…
We investigate the equilibrium charge distribution along a single annealed polyelectrolyte chain under different conditions. The coupling between the conformation of the chain and the local charge distribution is described for various…
Molecular dynamics simulation and recent theory are used to examine density correlations in semidilute solutions of highly charged, intrinsically flexible and hydrophilic polyelectrolytes in low salt. Quantitative comparison with no…
1. Introduction 2. Charged chains at infinite dilution - asymptotic properties 2.1 Definition of the model and Flory-like calculation 2.2 Variational approaches 2.3 Renormalization group calculations 2.4 Screening of electrostatic…
A new quantitative theory for polyelectrolytes in salt free dilute solutions is developed. Depending on the electrostatic interaction strength, polyelectrolytes in solutions can undergo strong stretching (with polyelectrolyte dimension…
Nonlinear elastic responses of short and stiff polyelectrolytes are investigated by dynamic simulations on a single molecule level. When a polyelectrolyte condensate undergoes a mechanical unfolding, two types of force-extension curves,…
Polymer electrolytes (PEs) are promising candidates for use in next-generation high-voltage batteries, as they possess advantageous elastic and electrochemical properties. However, PEs still suffer from low ionic conductivity and need to be…
The effective elasticity of highly charged stiff polyelectrolytes is studied in the presence of counterions, with and without added salt. The rigid polymer conformations may become unstable due to an effective attraction induced by…
We provide a theory for the dynamics of collapse of strongly charged polyelectrolytes (PEs) and flexible polyampholytes (PAs) using Langevin equation. After the initial stage, in which counterions condense onto PE, the mechanism of approach…
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…
We consider the thermodynamics of a uniformly charged polyelectrolyte with harmonic bonds. For such a system there is at high temperatures an approximate scaling of global properties like the end-to-end distance and the interaction energy…
In this paper we analyze the behavior of hydrophobic polyelectrolytes. It has been proposed that this system adopts a pearl-necklace structure reminiscent of the Rayleigh instability of a charged droplet. Using a Poisson-Boltzmann approach,…
The effective elasticity of highly charged stiff polyelectrolytes is studied in the presence of counterions, with and without added salt. The rigid polymer conformations may become unstable due to an effective attraction induced by…
We recently found that the energy contribution to the linear elasticity of polymer gels in the as-prepared state can be a significant negative value; the shear modulus is not proportional to the absolute temperature [Y. Yoshikawa et al.,…
We analyze solutions of strongly charged chains bridged by linkers such as multivalent ions. The gelation induced by the strong short range electrostatic attractions is dramatically suppressed by the long range electrostatic correlations…
It is well-known that the swelling behavior of ionic nanogels depends on their cross-link density, however it is unclear how different topologies should affect the response of the polyelectrolyte network. Here we perform Monte Carlo…
In order to better understand the collapse of polyions in poor solvent conditions the effective charge and the solvent quality of the hypothetically uncharged polymer backbone need to be known. In the present work this is achieved by…