Article,

Structure of polyelectrolytes in poor solvent

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Europhys. Lett., 60 (4): 566--572 (2002)

Abstract

We present molecular dynamics simulations on strongly charged polyelectrolytes in poor solvent. The resulting pearl-necklace conformations are analyzed in detail. Fluctuations in the number of pearls and their sizes lead only to small signatures in the form factor and the force-extension relation, which is a severe obstacle for experimental observations. We find that the position of the first peak in the structure factor varies with the monomer density as $\rho^0.35$ for all densities. This is a qualitative difference to polyelectrolyte solutions in good solvent which scale as $\rho^1/3$ and $\rho^1/2$ in the dilute and semi-dilute concentration regime, respectively.

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