Effect of Added Counterions on Strong Cationic Brushes

4 Effect of Added Counterions on Strong Cationic Brushes 

The strong cationic PMETAI brush adopts a rather elongated conformation due to the large osmotic pressure along the brush layer, as illustrated in Fig. 12b. Addition of salt to the solution will lower the net osmotic pressure. Thus, the stretching of the 

When the monovalent counterions are replaced by divalent or trivalent counterions, the osmotic pressure within the polyelectrolyte architecture will decrease dramatically due to the exchange of a considerable amount of entrapped, monovalent 

Simulation were performed to study the influence of counterions of different valencies on the morphology of the brushes [148], The results are in good agreement with our experimental findings. Moreover, Wegner et al. [146] and Grohn et al. [149] studied the influence of the aggregating behavior of polyelectrolytes with multivalent counterions. 

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