Highly charged polyelectrolytes adsorbed on oppositely charged colloidal particles are investigated by electrophoresis and dynamic light scattering. The dependence of the adsorbed amount and of the hydrodynamic layer thickness on the molecular mass and the salt level is analyzed. The adsorbed amount increases with increasing salt level and decreases with increasing molecular mass. The hydrodynamic layer thickness is independent of the molecular mass at low salt levels, but increases with the molecular mass as a power law with an exponent 0.10 ± 0.01 at high salt. The same behavior was observed for different polyelectrolytes and substrates and therefore is suspected to be generic. Due to semi-quantitative agreement with computer simulations carried out by Kong and Muthukumar in 1998, the observed behavior is interpreted with conformational changes of single adsorbed polyelectrolyte chains.

Repulsive electrostatic double-layer forces are responsible for the stabilization of charged colloidal particles in the presence of adsorbed polyelectrolytes of opposite and high line charge densities. This mechanism is revealed by studies of electrophoretic mobility and colloidal stability performed with dynamic light scattering as a function of the polyelectrolyte dose and the ionic strength for two different types of latex particles and four different types of polyelectrolytes. The dependence of these quantities is very similar for bare charged latex particles and the same particles in the presence of the different oppositely charged polyelectrolytes. Positively charged particles in the presence of anionic polyelectrolytes behave analogously to negatively charged particles in the presence of cationic polyelectrolytes.

No abstract

The mixed micellization between the nonionic surfactant decanoyl-N-methylglucamide (MEGA-10) and the common sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) in aqueous solutions of 0.1 M NaCl was investigated by the fluorescence probe method. The critical micelle concentrations were determined by the pyrene 1:3 ratio method. The experimental data are discussed in light of two mixing thermodynamic models within the framework of the pseudophase separation model, including the conventional regular solution theory and a recent treatment proposed by Maeda (J. Phys. Chem. B 2004, 108, 6043). This last approach provides a more appropriate description of the mixed system, particularly in two aspects: the nature of the interactions responsible for the stability of the mixed micelle and the behavior of the excess free energy per monomer of the system. By using the static quenching method, the mean micellar aggregation numbers of mixed micelles in the whole range of compositions were obtained. It was found that the micellar aggregation number initially increases with the content of the ionic component, then remains roughly constant, and, finally, decreases slightly for high content of this component. This behavior was analyzed taking into account the effects produced by the presence of the charged headgroups of sodium dodecyl sulfate, as this component increases its participation in the mixed micelle. The micropolarity of the mixed micelles was studied by the pyrene 1:3 ratio index. It was observed that the increasing participation of the ionic component induces the formation of micelles with a more dehydrated structure. Data of micellar microviscosity were obtained by using different methods, including fluorescence intensity measurements of Auramine O and steady-state fluorescence anisotropy of rhodamine B and diphenylbutadiene. The results obtained from these experiments are in good agreement and suggest the formation of mixed micelles with a less ordered structure as the content of SDS increases.

The thickness of adsorbed polyelectrolyte layers on oppositely charged particles can be measured by dynamic light scattering (DLS) with a precision of fractions of a nanometer. However, such data can be only reliably obtained when effects of particle aggregation are carefully eliminated by working at low particle number concentrations. In order to achieve a sufficient light scattering intensity at the same time, the size of colloidal particles must be chosen relatively large. We find that such measurements are best carried out with latex particles in the range of diameters of 150−300 nm. The precision of the measurement can be further enhanced with multiangle DLS. The thickness of adsorbed polyelectrolyte layers on oppositely charged particles is normally below 10 nm. At low ionic strengths, a typical thickness is merely 1−2 nm, while at higher ionic strengths one observes thicknesses between 6 and 9 nm. The transition between these two regimes occurs at ionic strengths 0.01−0.05 M. These observations were made with various highly charged cationic and anionic polyelectrolytes and can be considered as quite generic.