Related papers: Rod-like Polyelectrolyte Brushes with Mono- and Mu…
We have modeled the layer-by-layer assembly process of flexible polyelectrolytes on flat surfaces. The multilayer has a three-zone structure. An exponential growth is found for the first several layers, followed by a linear growth for…
We introduce a generalized non-uniform mean-field formalism to describe the dissociation of weak rod-like polyelectrolytes (PEs). Our approach allows for two-sublattice symmetry breaking which in titration curves is associated with a…
Polyelectrolyte surfactant mixtures and their interactions with fluid interfaces are an important research field due to their use in technological applications. Most of the existing knowledge on these systems is based on models in which the…
Solid polymer electrolytes for lithium batteries promise improvements in safety and energy density if their conductivity can be increased. Nanostructured block copolymer electrolytes specifically have the potential to provide both good…
The effective barrier height between an electrode and a ferroelectric (FE) depends on both macroscopic electrical properties and microscopic chemical and electronic structure. The behavior of a prototypical electrode/FE/electrode structure,…
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…
Brush-like structures emerge from stretching of long polymer chains, densely grafted on to the surface of an impermeable substrate. They arise due to the competition between conformational entropic elasticity of polymer chains and excluded…
The Self-Consistent Field theory of brushes of neutral water-soluble polymers described by two-state models is formulated in terms of the effective Flory interaction parameter $\chi_{eff}(T,\phi)$ that depends on both temperature, T and the…
The orientational order in vertically agitated granular rod monolayers is investigated experimentally and compared quantitatively with equilibrium Monte Carlo simulations and density functional theory. At sufficiently high number density,…
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…
An off-lattice Monte Carlo algorithm for solutions of equilibrium polymers (EP) is proposed. At low and moderate densities this is shown to reproduce faithfully the (static) properties found recently for flexible linear EP using a lattice…
A variational approach, based on a discrete representation of the chain, is used to calculate free energy and conformational properties in polyelectrolytes. The true bond and Coulomb potentials are approximated by a trial isotropic harmonic…
Shear responsive surfaces offer potential advances in a number of applications. Surface functionalisation using polymer brushes is one route to such properties, particularly in the case of entangled polymers. We report on neutron…
We investigate the unfolding of single polyelectrolyte (PE) chains collapsed by trivalent salt under the action of alternating-current (AC) electric fields through computer simulations and theoretical scaling. The results show that a…
Similarly and highly charged plates in the presence of multivalent counter ions attract each other, leading to electrostatically bound states. Using Monte-Carlo simulations we obtain the inter-plate pressure in the global parameter space.…
Large scale Monte Carlo simulations of dense layers of grafted polymer chains in good solvent conditions are used to explore the relaxation of a polymer brush. Monomer displacements are analyzed for the directions parallel and perpendicular…
We study the linear stability of transient electrodeposition in a charged random porous medium, whose pore surface charges can be of any sign, flanked by a pair of planar metal electrodes. Discretization of the linear stability problem…
Macromolecules, when immersed in a polar solvent like water, become charged by a fixed surface charge density which is compensated by ``counter-ions'' moving out of the surface. Such classical particle systems exhibit poor screening…
Knots on ring polymers tend to be tight. For knots on charged polymers (polyelectrolytes), electrostatic repulsion among the monomers is considered to enhance the persistence length and further localize the knots. However, the effects of…
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…