Related papers: Complexation of oppositely charged polyelectrolyte…
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…
Interplay of Coulomb interaction energy, free ion entropy, and conformational elasticity is a fascinating aspect in polyelectrolytes (PEs). We develop a theory for complexation of two oppositely charged PEs, a process known to be the…
The formation of inter-polyelectrolyte complexes from the association of oppositely charged polymers in an electrolyte is studied. The charged polymers are linear oppositely charged polyelectrolytes, with possibly a neutral block. This…
We consider the complexation of highly charged semiflexible polyelectrolytes with oppositely charged macroions. On the basis of scaling arguments we discuss how the resulting complexes depend on the persistence length of the…
We investigate the thermodynamic properties of a polyelectrolyte solution in a presence of {\it multivalent} salts. The polyions are modeled as rigid cylinders with the charge distributed uniformly along the major axis. The solution,…
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…
The phase separation of oppositely-charged polyelectrolytes in solution is of current interest . In this work we study the driving force for polyelectrolyte complexation using molecular dynamics simulations. We calculate the potential of…
Phase separation in salt-free symmetric mixtures of oppositely charged rodlike polyelectrolytes is studied using quasi-analytical calculations. Stability analyses for the isotropic-isotropic and the isotropic-nematic phase transitions in…
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…
We consider the phase behavior of polymeric systems by calculating the structure factors beyond the Random Phase Approximation. The effect of this correction to the mean-field RPA structure factor is shown to be important in the case of…
We study the complex formation between one long polyanion chain and many short oligocation chains by computer simulations. We employ a coarse-grained bead-spring model for the polyelectrolyte chains, and model explicitly the small salt…
The persistence length of a single, strongly charged, stiff polyelectrolyte chain is investigated theoretically. Path integral formulation is used to obtain the effective electrostatic interaction between the monomers. We find significant…
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…
Mobile charge in an electrolytic solution can in principle be represented as the divergence of ionic polarization. After adding explicit solvent polarization a finite volume of electrolyte can then be treated as a composite non-uniform…
We briefly discuss our recent field-theoretic study of polyelectrolyte complexation, which occurs in solutions of two oppositely charged polyelectrolytes. Charged systems require theoretical methods beyond the mean-field (or self-consistent…
Polyelectrolytes are commonly used to chelate multi-valent ions in aqueous solutions, playing a critical role in water softening and the prevention of mineralization. At sufficient ionic strength, ion-mediated…
In concentrated electrolytes with asymmetric or irregular ions, such as ionic liquids and solvent-in-salt electrolytes, ion association is more complicated than simple ion-pairing. Large branched aggregates can form at significant…
In this study, we propose a theoretical framework to investigate the interactions between flexible polymer chains, specifically polyelectrolytes (PEs). By calculating the system's free energy while considering position-dependent mutual…
Stretching dynamics of polymers in microfluidics is of particular interest for polymer scientists. As a charged polymer, a polyelectrolyte can be deformed from its coiled equilibrium configuration to an extended chain by applying uniform or…
The electrostatic correlations between ions profoundly influence the structure and forces within electrical double layers. Here, we apply the modified Gaussian Renormalized Fluctuation theory to investigate the counter-intuitive phenomenon…