POSSIBLE SCALING RELATIONS FOR SEMIDILUTE POLYELECTROLYTE SOLUTIONS

With the help of recent polymer scaling theories and the theory of the electrostatic persistence length, scaling relations are formulated for semidilute polyelectrolyte solutions. In the case of added salt, the derivations are straightforward, whereas conjectural assumptions are needed for salt-free polyelectrolyte solutions. Various power laws for the correlation length, radius of a single chain, scattering functions and osmotic pressure are derived, but the formulas usually lack precise numerical coefficients. The theory is applied quantitatively to neutron-scattering data and qualitatively to viscosity measurements. A novel application is a semiquantitative explanation of the strong concentration dependence of the dielectric increment. Simple expressions are found for several empirical dielectric parameters. © 1979, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.