Continuous monitoring of the effect of changing solvent conditions on polyelectrolyte conformations and interactions

This work introduces a technique for the continuous, automatic determination of the response of polyelectrolytes to changing solution conditions. Using a ternary pump to automatically change the solvent character for polyelectrolyte solutions, it is possible to continuously measure the changes in polyelectrolyte conformations and interactions. Detection is accomplished with a series of detectors, including multiangle light scattering, a single-capillary viscometer and a refractive index detector. The technique is applied to the ionic strength behavior of stiff, semiflexible and flexible polyelectrolytes. The effects of possible ion specificity and a quantitative comparison to current polyelectrolyte theories is left to future work.