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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 91 » Issue 2
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 028301 (2003) [4 pages]

Ion Multivalence and Like-Charge Polyelectrolyte Attraction

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John C. Butler1, Thomas Angelini1, Jay X. Tang2, and Gerard C. L. Wong1,*
1Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Department of Physics, Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
2Department of Physics, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA

Received 25 March 2003; published 11 July 2003

See accompanying Physics Focus

It is known empirically that multivalent ions generate attractions between like-charged polyelectrolytes, with different valence requirements for different systems. How multivalent must an ion be before it can condense a given polyelectrolyte? Using charge-tunable M13 virus rods and a family of artificial homologous “dumbbell” divalent ions of different sizes, we have constructed a multivalent ion-polyelectrolyte phase diagram, and find an experimentally motivated general criterion for like-charged attraction based on the ion valence, ion size, and the Gouy-Chapman length.

© 2003 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.028301
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.028301
PACS:
82.35.Rs, 82.35.Pq, 87.16.Ka

*Corresponding author.

Electronic address: gclwong@uiuc.edu

 
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