Related papers: Collapse of Stiff Polyelectrolytes due to Counteri…
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…
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…
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…
We present results of molecular dynamics simulations of strong, flexible polyelectrolyte chains in solution with added salt. The effect of added salt on the polyelectrolyte chain structure is fully treated for the first time as a function…
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…
We perform extensive molecular dynamics simulations of a highly charged flexible polyelectrolyte (PE) chain in a poor solvent for the case when the chain is in a collapsed state and the electrostatic interactions, characterized by the…
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…
The collapse kinetics of strongly charged polyelectrolytes in poor solvents is investigated by Langevin simulations and scaling arguments. The rate of collapse increases sharply as the valence of counterions, z, increases from one to four.…
We study the salt-dependent conformations of dilute flexible polyelectrolytes in solution via computer simulations. Low concentrations of multivalent salt induce the known conformational collapse of individual polyelectrolyte chains, but as…
The persistence length of a single, intrinsically rigid polyelectrolyte chain, above the Manning condensation threshold is investigated theoretically in presence of added salt. Using a loop expansion method, the partition function is…
The collapse of flexible polyelectrolytes in a solution of multivalent counterions is studied by means of a two state model. The states correspond to rod-like and spherically collapsed conformations respectively. We focus on the very dilute…
Light scattering and viscometric measurements on weak polyelectrolytes show two important aspects of counterion condensation, namely, non-monotonic variation in the polyelectrolyte size with the increase in the electrostatic strength, and,…
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 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 present a systematic statistical mechanical analysis of the conformational properties of a stiff polyelectrolyte chain with intrachain attractions that are due to counterion correlations. We show that the mean-field solution corresponds…
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…
Counterion distribution around an isolated flexible polyelectrolyte in the presence of a divalent salt is evaluated using the adsorption model [M. Muthukumar, J. Chem. Phys. {\bf 120}, 9343 (2004)] that considers Bjerrum length, salt…
Starting with a model Hamiltonian, we study using the uniform expansion method conformational behavior of polyelectrolytes in the presence and absence of salt. The uniform expansion method yields all the important local length scales in the…
We investigate the collapse kinetics of charged polymers (polyelectrolytes) induced by counterion condensation using coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. Under good solvent conditions, polyelectrolytes above the critical charge…
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…