In the context of a continuum model, the excess electrostatic free energy, F,,, of helical charge distributions has been obtained. .More specifically, we calculate F,,, of cy, DNA-like, and infinite pitch helical lines of charge embedded on the surface of a low dielectric cylinder. The deviation of F,,, from the uniformly charged cylinder value is evaluated as a function of screening length. Th...

The Debye-Huckel equation is solved for the electrostatic interaction of point charges on the surface of a dielectric cylinder immersed in salt water. Numerical results are given for the potential as a function of axial separation for charges on the same side and on opposite sides of the cylinder, and for two values of the Debye screening length: infinity and unity, in units of the cylinder rad...

Scaling theory describing the conformations of weakly charged star-branched polyelectrolytes in dilute and semi-dilute salt-free solutions is developed. The dependence of the star size on the number of branches as well as on the solution concentration is analyzed. It is shown that the star size increases with an increase in the number of branches, f, at small f and tends to a constant value at ...

The self-consistent field theory (SCFT) complemented with the Poisson-Boltzmann equation is employed to explore self-assembly of polyelectrolyte copolymers composed of charged blocks A and neutral blocks B. We have extended SCFT to dissociating triblock copolymers and demonstrated our approach on three characteristic examples: (1) diblock copolymer (AB) melt, (2) symmetric triblock copolymer (A...

New building units (unimers) for metallo-supramolecular polymers 2,5-bis(2,2':6',2''-terpyridine-4'-yl)thiophene, M, and 5,5'-bis(2,2':6',2''-terpyridine-4'-yl)(2,2'-bithiophene), B, with ionic groups attached to thiophene rings are prepared by the modification of corresponding bromo-precursors and assembled with Zn(2+) and Fe(2+) ions into alcohol-soluble conjugated constitutional-dynamic poly...

Boron nitride nanospheres (BNNSs) were functionalized with polyelectrolytes. The effect of the polyelectrolyte dose and ionic strength on charging aggregation properties was investigated. At appropriate doses, charge neutralization occurred, whereas by increasing dose, reversal observed. complete coating particles indicated a plateau in ζ-potential values, which do not change significantly beyo...