Correlation and image charge effects in electric double layers

Electrostatic interactions in strongly coupled soft matter

“…These correlations are systematically neglected on the mean-field level but become enhanced in strong-coupling conditions mentioned above. Recent theoretical attempts to incorporate ionic correlations include integral-equation methods [25,43], perturbative improvement of the mean-field theory including Gaussian-fluctuations theories [44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57], and local density functional theory [59,60], which compare well with numerical simulations and all exhibit attraction. These methods are mostly applicable for large separations between macroions or in the regime of low coupling strengths (the so-called high-temperature regime), and can not characterize the closely-packed bound state between like-charged macroions.…”

“…(43). The typical form of the free energy (43) is shown in Figure 12 for both large (ξ > ξ c = 2/3) and small (ξ < ξ c = 2/3) Manning parameters.…”

“…Counterions form electrostatically-bound clouds in the proximity of macroions and in many cases, predominantly determine the electric properties of charged solutions [3]. In particular, counterions can alter the effective interaction between like-charged macroions, and may generate a dominant electrostatic attraction between them in certain physical conditions [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,…”

“…The main scenarios which are put forward to explain the phenomenon of like-charge attraction have gone beyond the mean-field level by demonstrating that this phenomenon can be reproduced quantitatively by inclusion of electrostatic correlations [19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,…”

Anomalous Protein–Protein Interactions in Multivalent Salt Solution

“…[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] The mechanism relies mainly on strong spatial correlations between ions adsorbed at the surface of the macromolecule, a feature which is not taken into account by generic mean-field theories. [1][2][3][14][15][16] Human Serum Albumin (HSA) is a 585 residues long, 66.5 kDa protein, which is involved in the transport of diverse molecules in blood plasma. 17 HSA solutions undergo reentrant condensation upon addition of trivalent salts (YCl 3 , LaCl 3 , FeCl 3 , or AlCl 3 ).…”