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Photo Marie Skepö

Marie Skepö

Professor

Photo Marie Skepö

Confined polyelectrolytes: The complexity of a simple system.

Author

  • Sandra C C Nunes
  • Marie Skepö
  • Alberto A C C Pais

Summary, in English

The interaction between polyelectrolytes and counterions in confined situations and the mutual relationship between chain conformation and ion condensation is an important issue in several areas. In the biological field, it assumes particular relevance in the understanding of the packaging of nucleic acids, which is crucial in the design of gene delivery systems. In this work, a simple coarse-grained model is used to assess the cooperativity between conformational change and ion condensation in spherically confined backbones, with capsides permeable to the counterions. It is seen that the variation on the degree of condensation depends on counterion valence. For monovalent counterions, the degree of condensation passes through a minimum before increasing as the confining space diminishes. In contrast, for trivalent ions, the overall tendency is to decrease the degree of condensation as the confinement space also decreases. Most of the particles reside close to the spherical wall, even for systems in which the density is higher closer to the cavity center. This effect is more pronounced, when monovalent counterions are present. Additionally, there are clear variations in the charge along the concentric layers that cannot be totally ascribed to polyelectrolyte behavior, as shown by decoupling the chain into monomers. If both chain and counterions are confined, the formation of a counterion rich region immediately before the wall is observed. Spool and doughnut-like structures are formed for stiff chains, within a nontrivial evolution with increasing confinement. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Department/s

  • Computational Chemistry

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Pages

1579-1586

Publication/Series

Journal of Computational Chemistry

Volume

36

Issue

21

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Topic

  • Physical Chemistry (including Surface- and Colloid Chemistry)

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1096-987X