Designed Copolymers in the Presence of Monovalent Counterions

The main conclusion drawn from the simulations [170] is that in the presence of monovalent counterions, the charged protein-like copolymers can be soluble, even in a very poor solvent for hydrophobic units. There are three temperature regimes, which are characterized by different spatial organization of polyions and their conformational behavior. 

At sufficiently high temperature, i.e., in the weak coupling regime, the chains have extended coil-like or necklace-like conformations and are distributed more or less uniformly in the solution. Such a behavior is typical for single-chain HPEs [164]. 

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