Effect of the Surface Charge Distribution on the Fluid Phase Behavior of Charged Colloids and Proteins

Published

October 21, 2016

Author(s)

Marco A. Blanco Medina, Vincent K. Shen

Abstract

A generic but simple model is presented to evaluate the eft ect of the heterogeneous surface charge distribution of proteins and zwitterionic nanoparticles on their rich thermodynamic phase behavior. By considering surface charges as continuous "patches", the rich set of surface patterns that is embedded in proteins and charged patchy particles can readily be described. This model is used to study the fluid phase separation of charged particles where the screening length is of the same order of magnitude than the molecular/particle size. In particular, two type of charged particles are studied: dipolar fluids and protein-like fluids. The former represents the simplest case of zwitterionic particles, whose charge distribution can be described by the dipole moment. The latter system corresponds to molecules/particles with complex surface charge arrangements such as those in biomolecules. The results for both systems suggest a relation between the critical region, the strength of the interparticle interactions, and the dispersion of charged patches, where the critical temperature is strongly correlated to the magnitude of the dipole moment. Additionally, competition between attractive and repulsive charge-charge interactions seems to be related to the formation of transient clusters along the dilute phase in dipolar fluids, as well as to the broadening of the binodal curve in protein-like fluids. Finally, a variety of self-assembled architectures are detected for dipolar fluids upon small changes in the charge distribution, providing the groundwork for studying the self-assembly of charged patchy particles.

Citation

Journal of Chemical Physics

Volume

145

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

DOI Link

Keywords

protein phase separation, patchy particles, self-assembly, charge distribution, charged colloids

Citation

Blanco, M. and Shen, V. (2016), Effect of the Surface Charge Distribution on the Fluid Phase Behavior of Charged Colloids and Proteins, Journal of Chemical Physics, [online], https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4964613 (Accessed April 26, 2024)