IONIZABLE POLYMER BRUSHES. Ekaterina Zhulina1,2, Oleg Borisov1,2,3,
Frans Leermakers4. 1 Polymer Physics, Institute of Macromolecular Compounds
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IONIZABLE POLYMER BRUSHES
Ekaterina Zhulina1,2, Oleg Borisov1,2,3, Frans Leermakers4 1 Polymer Physics, Institute of Macromolecular Compounds of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia, Russia 2 Physical Engineering, National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, Russia , France 4 Laboratory of Physical Chemistry and Colloid Science, Wageningen University, The Netherlands
In the first part of the talk, the analytical self-consistent field (SCF) theory of a planar weak polyelectrolyte (PE) brush is discussed. The model describes the chain conformations in terms of trajectories (uses the strong stretching approximation for tethered polyions) and incorporates the electrostatic interactions on the Poisson-Boltzmann level. We discuss generic properties of such brushes (electrostatic potential, salt-mediated ionization, thermal fluctuations, etc.), and compare them with features of strong PE brushes. We then apply a numerical SCF model to simulate a natural ionizable brush composed of flexible unstructured domains of neurofilament (NF) triplet proteins. The latter form a cylindrical brush with three types of charged chains (H, M and L) that have different numbers of monomer units (aa residues) and levels of ionization. We focus here on the elastic properties of such brushes and investigate the pressure-distance profile in compressed NFs with different ratios of constituent H, M and L domains.
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