Conformation of a single polyelectrolyte chain in the Coulombic unscreened limit

Abstract

The dimensions of single polyelectrolyte chains of increasing length are investigated with off lattice Monte Carlo simulations. It is found that the expansion factor of the mean square end to end distance ${\mathrm{\alpha }}_{\mathit{R}}^2$ scales with ${\mathit{uN}}^{3/2}$ for chain lengths N between 10 and 100 in the whole range of the adimensional electrostatic coupling constant U. The agreement with the predictions of the mean field theory of dilute polyelectrolyte solutions in a θ solvent without added salt is discussed. The scaling laws are verified by our experiments, which suggest also the scaling behavior of the ‘‘shape’’ of the chains.