title: Ionic and pH effects on the osmotic properties and structure of polyelectrolyte gels.
abstract: We investigate the effects of salt concentration and pH on neutralized poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) gels in near physiological salt solutions. Either adding calcium ions or decreasing the pH are found to induce reversible volume transitions but the nature of these transitions seems to be different. For example, the osmotic pressure exhibits a simple power law dependence on the concentration as the transition is approached in both systems, but the power law exponent n is substantially different in the two cases. On decreasing the pH the value of n gradually increases from 2.1 (at pH = 7) to 3.2 (at pH = 1). By contrast, n decreases with increasing calcium ion concentration from 2.1 (in 100 mM NaCl solution) to 1.6 (0.8 mM CaCl(2) in 100 mM NaCl solution). In both systems, a strong increase of the small-angle neutron scattering intensity (SANS) is observed near the volume transition. The SANS results reveal that calcium ions favor the formation of linearly aligned regions in PAA gels.
authors.affiliation: Section on Tissue Biophysics and Biomimetics, Laboratory of Integrative and Medical Biophysics, NICHD, National Institutes of Health, 13 South Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
authors.forename: Ferenc
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Horkay
authors.forename: Peter J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Basser