Related papers: Collapse of Flexible Polyelectrolytes in Multivale…
The electrostatic double layer force is key to determining the stability and self-assembly of charged colloids and many other soft matter systems. Fully understanding the attractive force between two like-charged surfaces remains a great…
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…
Relevant information about the nature of the dynamics of ions in electrolytes can be obtained by studying the nonlinear dependence on an applied electric field. Here we use molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to study the field effects for…
The electrostatic complexation between DOTAP-DOPC unilamellar liposomes and an oppositely charged polyelectrolyte (NaPA) has been investigated in a wide range of the liposome surface charge density. We systematically characterized the…
We report Monte Carlo simulations of the melting of a single-polymer crystallite. We find that, unlike most atomic and molecular crystals, such crystallites can be heated appreciably above their melting temperature before they transform to…
We address the effects of chain connectivity on electrostatic fluctuations in polyelectrolyte solutions using a field-theoretic, renormalized Gaussian fluctuation (RGF) theory. As in simple electrolyte solutions (Z.-G. Wang, Phys. Rev. E.…
There is a large body of literature investigating the static and dynamic properties of polyelectrolytes due both to their widespread application in industrial processes and their ubiquitous presence in biology. Because of their highly…
We study the thermodynamic properties of a simple model for the possible mechanism of attraction between like charged rodlike polyions inside a polyelectrolyte solution. We consider two polyions in parallel planes, with $Z$ charges each, in…
The extension elasticity of rod-coil mutliblock copolymers is analyzed for two experimentally accessible situations. In the quenched case, when the architecture is fixed by the synthesis, the force law is distinguished by a sharp change in…
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 charge inversion phenomenon is studied by molecular dynamics simulations, focusing on size and valence asymmetric salts, and a threshold of surface charge density for charge inversion. The charge inversion criteria by the…
Screening of a strongly charged macroion by oppositely charged colloidal particles, micelles, or short polyelectrolytes is considered. Due to strong lateral repulsion such multivalent counterions form a strongly correlated liquid at the…
We investigate the dynamics of the collapse of a single copolymer chain, when the solvent quality is suddenly quenched from good to poor. We employ Brownian dynamics simulations of a bead-spring chain model and incorporate fluctuating…
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…
Soft matter materials, such as polymers, membranes, proteins, are often electrically charged. This makes them water soluble, which is of great importance in technological application and a prerequisite for biological function. We discuss a…
The response of a suspension under a variety of static or alternating external fields strongly depends on the equilibrium electric double layer that surrounds the colloidal particles in the suspension. The theoretical models for salt-free…
Dissolved ions can alter the local permittivity of water, nevertheless most theories and simulations ignore this fact. We present a novel algorithm for treating spatial and temporal variations in the permittivity and use it to measure the…
For single-file translocations of a charged macromolecule through a narrow pore, the crucial step of arrival of an end at the pore suffers from free energy barriers, arising from changes in intrachain electrostatic interaction, distribution…
The dependence of the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of charged, thermosensitive copolymers on their charge fraction and the salt concentration is investigated by employing systematic cloud-point experiments and analytical…
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…