Chain Structure and Counterion Condensation in Solutions of Flexible Polyelectrolyte Chains

9619277 Liu本基金的主要目的是发展对聚电解质的理论认识。具体来说，这个项目有两个相关的组成部分：一个涉及进一步发展变分形式，以研究任意浓度下聚电解质溶液的链结构。这与过去对聚电解质链结构的研究形成对比，在无限稀释极限下，聚电解质链结构仅限于单链。第二部分是应用这一形式理论研究反离子凝结。该理论的主要优点是，它可以处理波动的、本质上灵活的链，并且不需要限制固定的模型几何形状，如线电荷和圆柱体。这项工作有望解决聚电解质溶液领域中一些最具争议的问题，并为更复杂系统的类似研究铺平道路，如带电自组装表面活性剂系统、聚电解质复合物和聚电解质/膜复合物。在这笔资助中，一位从事理论聚合物科学的年轻女性研究员将支持研究聚电解质的性质。这些是可溶于水的聚合物，通常随处可见，特别是与环保加工有关。本项目的工作解决了一些长期存在的问题，即带电聚合物的结构及其对相当高水平进一步充电的反应。这项工作使用了复杂的、最先进的理论机制，并建议在PI最近发展的必要数学技术的基础上进一步建立。＊＊＊

9619277 Liu The principal objective in this grant is to develop theoretical understanding of polyelectrolytes. Specifically there are two related components of this project: One involves further development of a variational formalism to study the chain structure of a polyelectrolyte solution at arbitrary concentrations. This is in contrast to past work on the polyelectrolyte chain structure which has been limited to a single chain, in the infinite dilution limit. The second part is an application of this formalism to study counterion condensation. The principal advantage of this theory is that it can treat fluctuating, intrinsically flexible chains and it does not require restriction to fixed model geometries such as line charges and cylinders. This work is expected to resolve some of the most controversial questions in the field of polyelectrolyte solutions and also pave the way for similar studies of even more complex systems such as charged self-assembled surfactant systems, polyelectrolyte complexes, and polyelectrolyte/membrane complexes. %%% In this grant to a young female researcher in theoretical polymer science, there is support to study properties of polyelectrolytes. These are the polymers that are soluble in water, generally found everywhere and especially relevant to environmentally-benign processing. The work in this project addresses some long standing questions in the structure of charged polymers and their response to further charging at fairly high levels. This work uses sophisticated, state-of-the-art, theoretical machinery and proposes to further build on the PI's recent development of necessary mathematical techniques. ***