Macroions in salty water with multivalent ions: giant inversion of charge
Screening of a strongly charged macroion by oppositely charged colloidal particles, micelles, or short polyelectrolytes is considered. Because of strong lateral repulsion such multivalent counterions form a strongly correlated liquid at the surface of the macroion. This liquid provides correlation-induced attraction of multivalent counterions to the macroion surface. As a result even a moderate concentration of multivalent counterions in the solution inverts the sign of the net macroion charge. We show that at high concentration of monovalent salt the absolute value of inverted charge can be larger than the bare one. This giant inversion of charge can be observed in electrophoresis.
Nguyen
TT
Department of Physics, University of Minnesota, 116 Church Street Southeast, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
Grosberg
AY
Shklovskii
BI