On the nature of screening in charge regulated macroion solutions

Abstract

We present a derivation of the screening length for a solution containing a charge regulated macroion, e.g. protein, with its counterions. We show that it can be obtained directly from the second derivatives of the total free energy by taking recourse to the ``uncertainty relation" of the Legendre transform which connects the Hessians or the local curvatures of the free energy as a function of density and its Legendre transform, i.e., osmotic pressure, as a function of chemical potentials. Based on the Fowler-Guggenheim-Frumkin model of charge regulation we then analyze the ``screening resonance" and the ``overscreening" of the screening properties of the charge-regulated macroion solution.