ELECTROSTATIC FORCES BETWEEN CHARGED SURFACES IN THE PRESENCE OF A POLYELECTROLYTE CHAIN

We have derived the self-consistent field equations describing the configurational statistics of an infinitely long polyelectrolyte chain confined between two charged macroscopic surfaces. We were able to obtain an analytic solution of the linearized SCF equations in the limit of the ground-state dominance. This permits us to investigate the connection between the polyelectrolyte conformation and the intersurface forces for different values of the parameters describing the system. The most important characteristics of the interaction free energy is a region of intersurface separations where the interactions are attractive. We show that the onset of attraction is connected with a conformational transition of the confined chain.