Polyelectrolytes chain conformation under confinement: electrostatic effects studied by Zero Average Contrast method
The conformation of polyelectrolytes in confined geometries is expected to be perturbated by the existence of charges inside the pore at the wall surface. Here we propose to directly access the polyelectrolyte form factor confined in non-connected 1D nanoporous anodic alumina (AA) with monodisperse pore diameter Dp using Small-Angle Neutron Scattering and the Zero Average Contrast method. By an appropriate hydrogenated/deuterated ratio of the polyelectrolyte and of the solvent one can match the scattering of confining medium and also cancel the intra and inter-chains correlations to directly measure the polyelectrolyte form factor whose analysis allows the determination of the polyelectrolyte radius of gyration Rg, contour length L and persistence length lp. In this experiment we’ll investigate the electrostatic effect on the confined polyelectrolyte chains (polystyrene sulfonate PSS-Na+ and poly-2-vinylpyridine P2VP+) by i) varying the wall charge (positive or neutral) inside the AA pore, ii) varying the Debye length and iii) varying the Dp/2Rg ratio (> and < 1). This work will provide structural information for future inelastic experiments to access the dynamics of these systems.
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JOUAULT Nicolas; CHENNEVIERE Alexis; CHRISTOULAKI Anastasia; DUBOIS Emmanuelle and PORCAR Lionel. (2016). Polyelectrolytes chain conformation under confinement: electrostatic effects studied by Zero Average Contrast method. Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) doi:10.5291/ILL-DATA.9-11-1764
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