Jan Forsman
Professor
Repulsion between oppositely charged surfaces in multivalent electrolytes
Author
Summary, in English
In answer to recent experimental force measurements between oppositely charged surfaces we here reproduce the repulsion in the presence of multivalent salt using Monte Carlo simulations within the primitive model. Our osmotic pressure curves are in good agreement with experimental results. In contrast with Poisson-Boltzmann calculations, both repulsion and charge inversion are seen in the simulations. Repulsion is observed only for conditions under which there is charge inversion at large separations. However, in these cases, the repulsion is present also at intermediate separations, where there is no charge inversion. The charge inversion is thereby not the cause of the repulsion. Instead the repulsion appears to be an effect of the large amount of excess salt in the slit. Both phenomena, however, are closely linked and a consequence of ion-ion correlations, promoted by a strong electrostatic coupling.
Department/s
- Computational Chemistry
Publishing year
2006
Language
English
Publication/Series
Physical Review Letters
Volume
97
Issue
6
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
American Physical Society
Topic
- Theoretical Chemistry (including Computational Chemistry)
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1079-7114