Related papers: Elasticity in strongly interacting soft solids: po…
This paper discusses the elastic behavior of polyelectrolyte networks. The deformation behavior of single polyelectrolyte chains is discussed. It is shown that a strong coupling between interactions and chain elasticity exists. The theory…
This paper discusses the elastic behavior of a single polyelectrolyte chain. A simple scaling analysis as in self avoiding walk chains are not possible, because three interplaying relevant length scales are involved, i.e., the Debye…
Dielectric elastomers (DEs) that couple deformation and electrostatics have the potential for use in soft sensors and actuators with applications ranging from robotic, biomedical, energy, aerospace and automotive technologies. However,…
We study the effect of intersegment interactions on the effective bending and stretching moduli of a semiflexible polymer chain with a finite stretching modulus. For an interaction potential of a screened Debye-H\" uckel type…
We present a set of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of strongly charged, flexible polyelectrolyte chains under poor solvent conditions in a salt free solution. Structural properties of the chains and of the solutions are reported. By…
We study the bending rigidity of highly charged stiff polyelectrolytes, for both a single chain and many chains forming a bundle. A theory is developed to account for the interplay between competitive binding of counterions and charge…
We investigate the electrostatic contribution to the persistence length of a semiflexible polymer chain whose segments interact via a screened Debye-H\" uckel dipolar interaction potential. We derive the expressions for the renormalized…
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,…
We investigate theoretically polyelectrolyte bridging interactions on the two-body level. The model system is composed of two macroions with two oppositely charged flexible chains. The electrostatic interactions are treated on the Debye -…
We investigate a system of dense polyelectrolytes in solution. The Langevin dynamics of the system with linearized hydrodynamics is formulated in the functional integral formalism and a transformation made to collective coordinates. Within…
We theoretically study the polarizability and the interactions of neutral complexes consisting of a semi-flexible polyelectrolyte adsorbed onto an oppositely charged spherical colloid. In the systems we studied, the bending energy of the…
The response of a semiflexible polyelectrolyte chain to stretching in the regimes of moderate and weak screening is studied theoretically, with a special focus on DNA experiments. By using the nonlinear Poisson--Boltzmann description of…
We study the effect of electrostatic interactions on the distribution function of the end-to-end distance of a single polyelectrolyte chain in the rodlike limit. The extent to which the radial distribution function of a polyelectrolyte is…
Polyelectrolytes in poor solvents show a necklace structure where collapsed polymer pearls are linked to stretched strings. In the present paper the elasticity of such chains is studied in detail. Different deformation regimes are…
The elasticity of disordered and polydisperse polymer networks is a fundamental problem of soft matter physics that is still open. Here, we self-assemble polymer networks via simulations of a mixture of bivalent and tri- or tetravalent…
Experiments have shown that elasticity of disordered filamentous networks with compliant crosslinks is very different from networks with rigid crosslinks. Here, we model and analyze filamentous networks as a collection of randomly oriented…
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…
We use a coarse-grained molecular dynamics model to study the electrophoretic behaviour of flexible polyelectrolyte chains. We first characterize the static properties of the model with respect to the chain length, the polyelectrolyte…
We study the properties of polyelectrolyte chains under different solvent conditions, using a variational technique. The free energy and the conformational properties of a polyelectrolyte chain are studied minimizing the free energy $F_N$,…
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…