Aggregation Dynamics of Rigid Polyelectrolytes
arXiv:1510.01546 · doi:10.1063/1.4939870
Abstract
Similarly-charged polyelectrolytes are known to attract each other and aggregate into bundles when the charge density of the polymers exceeds a critical value that depends on the valency of the counterions. The dynamics of aggregation of such rigid polyelectrolytes are studied using large scale molecular dynamics simulations. We find that the morphology of the aggregates depends on the value of the charge density of the polymers. For values close to the critical value, the shape of the aggregates is cylindrical with height equal to the length of a single polyelectrolyte chain. However, for larger values of charge, the linear extent of the aggregates increases as more and more polymers aggregate.In both the cases, we show that the number of aggregates decrease with time as power laws with exponents that are not numerically distinguishable from each other, and are independent of charge density of the polymers, valency of the counterions, density, and length of the polyelectrolyte chain. We model the aggregation dynamics using the Smoluchowski coagulation equation with kernels determined from the molecular dynamics simulations, and justify the numerically obtained value of the exponent. Our results suggest that, once counterions condense, effective interactions between polyelectrolyte chains short-ranged and the aggregation of polyelectrolytes is diffusion-limited.
References in corpus (4)
Cited by in corpus (5)
- Mechanism of chain collapse of strongly charged polyelectrolytes
- Aggregation Dynamics of Rigid Polyelectrolytes
- Stationary mass distribution and nonlocality in models of coalescence and shattering
- A Monte Carlo algorithm to measure probabilities of rare events in cluster-cluster aggregation
- The Effect of Explicit Polar Species on Conformational Behavior of a Single Polyelectrolyte Chain