Theoretical and computational analysis of the electrophoretic polymer mobility inversion induced by charge correlations
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Volume Title
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
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Date
2023-03
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Mcode
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Language
en
Pages
14
1-14
1-14
Series
Physical Review E, Volume 107, issue 3
Abstract
Electrophoretic (EP) mobility reversal is commonly observed for strongly charged macromolecules in multivalent salt solutions. This curious effect takes place, e.g., when a charged polymer, such as DNA, adsorbs excess counterions so that the counterion-dressed surface charge reverses its sign, leading to the inversion of the polymer drift driven by an external electric field. In order to characterize this seemingly counterintuitive phenomenon that cannot be captured by electrostatic mean-field theories, we adapt here a previously developed strong-coupling-dressed Poisson-Boltzmann approach to the cylindrical geometry of the polyelectrolyte-salt system. Within the framework of this formalism, we derive an analytical polymer mobility formula dressed by charge correlations. In qualitative agreement with polymer transport experiments, this mobility formula predicts that the increment of the monovalent salt, the decrease of the multivalent counterion valency, and the increase of the dielectric permittivity of the background solvent suppress charge correlations and increase the multivalent bulk counterion concentration required for EP mobility reversal. These results are corroborated by coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations showing how multivalent counterions induce mobility inversion at dilute concentrations and suppress the inversion effect at large concentrations. This re-entrant behavior, previously observed in the aggregation of like-charged polymer solutions, calls for verification by polymer transport experiments.Description
Funding Information: This work was supported by the Academy of Finland through its Centres of Excellence Programme (2022-2029, LIBER) under Project No. 346111 (M.S.). The work was also supported by Technology Industries of Finland Centennial Foundation TT2020 grant (T.A-N. and X.Y.). We are grateful for the support by FinnCERES Materials Bioeconomy Ecosystem. Computational resources by CSC IT Centre for Finland and RAMI—RawMatters Finland Infrastructure are also gratefully acknowledged. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 American Physical Society.
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Citation
Yang , X , Buyukdagli , S , Scacchi , A , Sammalkorpi , M & Ala-Nissila , T 2023 , ' Theoretical and computational analysis of the electrophoretic polymer mobility inversion induced by charge correlations ' , Physical Review E , vol. 107 , no. 3 , 034503 , pp. 1-14 . https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.107.034503
