Strongly Charged Polymer Brushes

2004/08/02 by Ben O’Shaughnessy, Ben O'Shaughnessy, O'Shaughnessy, Ben +2
Chemistry · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Electrostatics and Colloid Interactions #FOS: Physical sciences #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Polymer Surface Interaction Studies #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #cond-mat.soft

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0408036

5 pages, 3 Postscript figures

openalex publication_date 2004/08/02 · arxiv created 2005/08/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Charged polymer brushes are layers of surface-tethered chains. Experimental systems are frequently strongly charged. Here we calculate phase diagrams for such brushes in terms of salt concentration n_s, grafting density and polymer backbone charge density. Electrostatic stiffening and counterion condensation effects arise which are absent from weakly charged brushes. In various phases chains are locally or globally fully stretched and brush height H has unique scaling forms; at higher salt concentrations we find H ~ n_s^(-1/3), in good agreement with experiment.

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