Surface Polarization Effects in Confined Polyelectrolyte Solutions
Surface polarization effects in confined polyelectrolyte solutions Debarshee Bagchia , Trung Dac Nguyenb , and Monica Olvera de la Cruza,b,c,1 aDepartment of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208; bDepartment of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208; and cDepartment of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208 Contributed by Monica Olvera de la Cruz, June 24, 2020 (sent for review April 21, 2020; reviewed by Rene Messina and Jian Qin) Understanding nanoscale interactions at the interface between ary conditions (18, 19). However, for many biological settings two media with different dielectric constants is crucial for con- as well as in supercapacitor applications, molecular electrolytes trolling many environmental and biological processes, and for confined by dielectric materials, such as graphene, are of interest. improving the efficiency of energy storage devices. In this Recent studies on dielectric confinement of polyelectrolyte by a contributed paper, we show that polarization effects due to spherical cavity showed that dielectric mismatch leads to unex- such dielectric mismatch remarkably influence the double-layer pected symmetry-breaking conformations, as the surface charge structure of a polyelectrolyte solution confined between two density increases (20). The focus of the present study is the col- charged surfaces. Surprisingly, the electrostatic potential across lective effects of spatial confinement by two parallel surfaces
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