Berlin 2001 – scientific programme
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CPP: Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik
CPP 18: Poster: Polymer Blends, Heterogeneous Systems, Colloids and Nanoparticles, Interfaces, Polyelectrolytes
CPP 18.36: Poster
Wednesday, April 4, 2001, 12:30–15:00, AT1
Structure of Polyelectrolyte Solutions: An Integral Equation Theory Approach — •Thomas Hofmann1, Roland G. Winkler2, and Peter Reineker1 — 1Abteilung Theoretische Physik, Universität Ulm, 89069 Ulm — 2Institut für Festkörperforschung, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich
The study of polyelectrolytes, i.e., charged polymers dissolved in a polar solvent and in the presence of dissociated counterions, has been an outstanding problem in polymer science for several decades, both from an experimental as well as a theoretical point of view. We study the structure of polyelectrolyte solutions using an integral equation theory approach. This so called PRISM theory is a liquid state theory based on modified Ornstein Zernike equations for multicomponent systems. The resulting equations are solved numerically. Using this methods we calculated the pair correlation functions and structure factors as well as certain thermodynamic properties, such as osmotic pressure, for various chain lengths, densities, Bjerrum lengths and salt concentrations for different chain models. We present the results for a system of rigid rod polyelectrolytes (i.e. TMV) with explicit consideration of the counterions. For comparison the properties of the same system were calculated using the well know Debye-Hueckel approximation. Furthermore the PRISM equations are extended by selfconsistent methods in order to study the conformational properties of semiflexible polyelectrolytes for various densities and Bjerrum lenghts.