Eur. Phys. J. E (2007) 22: 325-333
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/e2007-00041-x

Regular Articles

Behavior of block-polyampholytes near a charged surface

Institut für Theoretische Physik II, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Universitätsstrasse 1, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

^* e-mail: messina@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de

Received: 22 August 2006
Published online: 11 May 2007

Abstract

The behavior of polyampholytes near a charged planar surface is studied by means of Monte Carlo simulations. The investigated polyampholytes are overall electrically neutral and made up of oppositely charged units (called blocks) that are highly charged and of the the same length. The influence of block length and substrate's surface-charge-density on the adsorption behavior is addressed. A detailed structural study, including local monomer concentration, monomer mean height, and transversal chain size, is provided. It is demonstrated that adsorption is favored for long enough blocks and/or high enough Coulomb interface-ion couplings. By explicitly measuring the chain size in the bulk, it is shown that the charged interface induces either a swelling or a shrinkage of the transversal dimension of the chain depending, in a non trivial manner, on the block length.