Overcharging, charge inversion and reentrant condensation: Using highly-charged polyelectrolytes in tetravalent salt solutions as an example of study

Abstract

We study salt-induced charge overcompensation and charge inversion of flexible polyelectrolytes via computer simulations and demonstrate the importance of ion excluded volume. Reentrant condensation takes place when the ion size is comparable to monomer size, and happens in a middle region of salt concentration. In a high-salt region, ions can overcharge a chain near its surface and charge distribution around a chain displays an oscillatory behavior. Unambiguous evidence obtained by electrophoresis shows that charge inversion does not necessarily appear with overcharging and occurs when the ion size is not big. These findings suggest a disconnection of resolubilization of polyelectrolyte condensates at high salt concentration with charge inversion.

letter (11 pages, 4 figures), accepted for publication in jpcb

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Heterogeneous morphology and dynamics of polyelectrolyte brush condensates in trivalent counterion solution
• Electrostatic correlation induced ion condensation and charge inversion in multivalent electrolytes
• On the nature of overcharging and charge inversion in electrical double layers
• Ion assisted structural collapse of a single stranded DNA: a molecular dynamics approach
• Ion correlation driven like-charge attraction in multivalent salt solutions
• Theoretical and computational analysis of the electrophoretic polymer mobility inversion induced by charge correlations