Forces and conformation of a polyelectrolyte chain between two charged walls

✍ Scribed by R. Podgornik

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1990
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 691 KB
• Volume: 174
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0009-2614
• DOI: 10.1016/0009-2614(90)80105-m

✦ Synopsis

We investigate forces between two charged macroscopic surfaces where the intervening medium is composed of a uni-univalent electrolyte plus an additional, infinitely long polyelectrolyte chain. The level of the theory is the same as the usual Poisson-Boltzmann scheme, upgraded by a self-consistent inclusion of the polyelectrolyte configurational statistics into the statistical sum. The equations obtained arc solved analytically in the limit of small polymer charge and small intersurface separation as compared with the Debye screening length. The interaction free energy as a function of separation between the surfaces behaves in a markedly different way compared to the case of no intervening polyelectrolyte. The surprising feature of the force characteristics is an additional attractive force derivable even in the mean-field approximation.