Monte carlo study of polyelectrolyte gels

Abstract

The discontinuous transition between dense and dilute phases in polyelectrolyte gels is observed in Bond-Fluctuation Method Monte Carlo simulations of gels. The transition is driven by the competition between local attractive interactions of a poor-quality solvent and global repulsive interactions from counter-ion pressure. A procedure is introduced that prevents local attractive interactions from destroying ergodicity. Under good solvent conditions, lengths and volumes of gels are found to follow self-avoiding random walk scaling. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.