Charge Regulating Macro-ions in Salt Solutions: Screening Properties and Electrostatic Interactions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how charge-regulating macro-ions influence electrostatic screening in salt solutions, revealing that macro-ion asymmetry and donor/acceptor behavior significantly modify screening and surface interactions, with implications for protein solutions.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of charge regulation effects on macro-ion screening properties, emphasizing the role of asymmetry and donor/acceptor tendencies in collective electrostatic behavior.

Findings

Asymmetric macro-ions enhance screening effects.

Symmetric macro-ions can decrease screening, affecting Debye length.

Donor macro-ions show regular screening behavior, while acceptors exhibit non-monotonic effects.

Abstract

We revisit the charge-regulation mechanism of macro-ions and apply it to mobile macro-ions in a bathing salt solution. In particular, we examine the effects of correlation between various adsorption/desorption sites and analyze the collective behavior in terms of the solution effective screening properties. We show that such a behavior can be quantified in terms of the charge {\em asymmetry} of the macro-ions, defined by their preference for a non-zero effective charge, and their {\em donor/acceptor} propensity for exchanging salt ions with the bathing solution. Asymmetric macro-ions tend to increase the screening, while symmetric macro-ions can in some cases decrease it. Macro-ions that are classified as donors display a rather regular behavior, while those that behave as acceptors exhibit an anomalous non-monotonic Debye length. The screening properties, in their turn, engender important modifications to the disjoining pressure between two charged surfaces. Our findings are in particular relevant for solutions of proteins, whose exposed amino acids can undergo charge dissociation/association processes to/from the bathing solution, and can be considered as a solution of charged regulated macro-ions, as analyzed here.