ICP-Kolloquium, Prof. Dr. Peter Košovan

Charge regulation, aggregation and phase separation in polyelectrolytes and colloids

If positively and negatively charged macromolecules or colloids are mixed together, they often aggregate. Under certain conditions, this aggregation results in phase-separation, yielding a polymer-rich precipitate in equilibrium with a polymer-free supernatant. In this lecture, we discuss under what conditions this phase separation occurs in mixtures of oppositely charged macromolecules. By combining coarse-grained simulations with carefully designed experiments, we gain quantitative insights into this process. We specifically focus on how this process can be facilitated by charge regulation, i.e., adaptation of charge of a macromolecule to its local microenvironment.