2009/03/07 by Akira Ōnuki, Akira Onuki, Onuki, Akira +2
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Electrostatics and Colloid Interactions #FOS: Physical sciences #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0903.1331
10 pages, 3 figures. to be published in Journal of Physical Chemistry B
arxiv created 2009/03/07 · openalex publication_date 2009/03/07 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a Ginzburg-Landau theory of inhomogeneous polyelectrolytes with a polar solvent. First, we take into account the molecular (solvation) interaction among the ions, the charged monomers, the uncharged monomers, and the solvent molecules, together with the electrostatic interaction with a composition-dependent dielectric constant. Second, we treat the degree of ionization as a fluctuating variable dependent on the local electric potential. With these two ingredients included, our results are as follows. (i) We derive a mass reaction law and a general expression for the surface tension. (ii) We calculate the structure factor of the composition fluctuations as a function of various parameters of the molecular interactions, which provides a general criterion of the formation of mesophases. (iii) We numerically examine some typical examples of interfaces and mesophase structures, which strongly depend on the molecular interaction parameters.