Monte Carlo simulation study of concentration effects and scattering functions for polyelectrolyte wormlike micelles

We present an extensive Monte Carlo study on systems of many semiflexible chains with excluded volume and electrostatic interactions within the Debye-Huckel approximation. The model is tuned to mimic charged wormlike micelles in solution under different conditions. Simulations have been performed at different ionic strengths of added salt, charge densities, chain lengths, and volume fractions (eta), covering the dilute to concentrated regime. The simple model used is able to reproduce the structural peak of the scattering function S(q), observed in many experiments, and other important features of polyelectrolytes in solution. Universal behavior of S(0) is established after a resealing of eta. Single-chain scattering functions, radii of gyration, and end-to-end distances have been sampled and compared with data from previous simulation studies and theories. The persistence length has also been analyzed and compared with the Odijk-Skolnick-Fixman predictions. The behavior of the quantities studied is in general found to be more complex than scaling theory predictions.