1999/07/13 by Namkyung Lee, Nam-Kyung Lee, D. Thirumalai +2
Chemistry · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Polymer Synthesis and Characterization #FOS: Physical sciences #Polymer Nanocomposites and Properties #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Surfactants and Colloidal Systems #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/9907199
4pages, 4 figures
openalex publication_date 1999/07/13 · arxiv created 2000/02/20 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The collapse kinetics of strongly charged polyelectrolytes in poor solvents is investigated by Langevin simulations and scaling arguments. The rate of collapse increases sharply as the valence of counterions, z, increases from one to four. The combined system of the collapsed chain and the condensed counterions forms a Wigner crystal when the solvent quality is not too poor provided z >= 2. For very poor solvents the morphology of the collapsed structure resembles a Wigner glass. For a fixed z and quality of the solvent the efficiency of collapse decreases dramatically as the size of the counterion increases. A valence dependent diagram of states in poor solvents is derived.