Physics – Condensed Matter – Soft Condensed Matter
Scientific paper
2008-12-18
Physics
Condensed Matter
Soft Condensed Matter
Latex file and 9 eps figures are in .tar.gz file Submitted to Journal of Chemical Physics
Scientific paper
10.1063/1.3078265
We study the equilibrium conformations of a grafted polyelectrolyte (PE) in the presence of explicit counterions (CI) using Monte Carlo simulations. The interplay between attractive Lennard-Jones interactions (parametrized by epsilon), and electrostatics (parametrized by A = q^2l_B/a, where q =counterion valency, l_B = Bjerrum length and a = monomer diameter), results in a variety of conformations, characterized as extended (E), pearls with m beads (P_m), sausage (S) and globular (G). For large epsilon, we observe a transition from G -> P_2 -> P_3 -> . . . -> S -> G with increasing A, i.e., a change from poor to good, to reentrant poor solvent, whereas, at lower epsilon, the sequence of transitions is, E -> S -> G. The conformation changes are directly related to the nature of binding of CI onto the PE. The transition between S -> G is continuous and associated with critical fluctuations in the shape driven by fluctuations in the fraction of condensed CI.
Jayasree K.
Ranjith Padinhateeri
Rao Madan
Sunil Kumar P. B.
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