Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2024
Monday–Friday, March 4–8, 2024; Minneapolis & Virtual
Session N33: Dynamics of Polymers and Polyelectrolytes II
11:30 AM–2:18 PM,
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Room: 102E
Sponsoring
Unit:
DPOLY
Chair: Benjamin Paren, Stevens Institute of Technology
Abstract: N33.00001 : Charge Asymmetry Suppresses Coarsening Dynamics in Liquid–Liquid Phase Separation of Polymer Coacervates*
11:30 AM–11:42 AM
Presenter:
Shensheng Chen
(California Institute of Technology)
Authors:
Shensheng Chen
(California Institute of Technology)
Zhen-Gang Wang
(Caltech)
Collaboration:
Chemical Engineeing, California Institute of Technology
Using dissipative particle dynamics simulation, we show that charge asymmetry fundamentally alters the LLPS dynamics in PEC. When the small droplets are charge-balanced, the coarsening follows the classical spinodal decomposition; However, when the small droplets carry net charges, the coarsening dynamics is significantly slower, with a reduced growth exponent that decreases with increasing charge asymmetry. We rationalize this slowing down by showing the free energy barrier in merging two net-charged coacervate droplets. Solvent quality has effects: Poorer solvent conditions accelerate the coarsening in charge-asymmetric systems, but slightly slows down that in symmetric systems. These results highlight the nontrivial effects of electrostatic interactions on the LLPS dynamics.
*This research is supported by funding from Hong Kong Quantum AI Lab Ltd. We thank the general computation time allocated by the resources of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), which is a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility, at Brookhaven National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-SC0012704.
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