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Chain Collapse and Counterion Condensation in Dilute Polyelectrolyte Solutions

N. V. Brilliantov, D. V. Kuznetsov, R. Klein

cond-mat.softarXiv:cond-mat/9802292

Abstract

A new quantitative theory for polyelectrolytes in salt free dilute solutions is developed. Depending on the electrostatic interaction strength, polyelectrolytes in solutions can undergo strong stretching (with polyelectrolyte dimension Rg lB1/3N, where lB is the Bjerrum length and N is the number of the chain segments) or strong compression (with Rg lB-1/2N1/3). A strong polymer collapse occurs as a first-order phase transition due to accompanying counterion condensation.

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