Reduction of the hydrophobic attraction between charged solutes in water

Abstract

We examine the effective force between two nanometer scale solutes in water by Molecular Dynamics simulations. Macroscopic considerations predict a strong reduction of the hydrophobic attraction between solutes when the latter are charged. This is confirmed by the simulations which point to a surprising constancy of the effective force between oppositely charged solutes at contact, while like charged solutes lead to significantly different behavior between positive and negative pairs. The latter exhibit the phenomenon of ``like-charge attraction" previously observed in some colloidal dispersions.

4 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Polymer induced depletion potentials in polymer-colloid mixtures

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