Charge symmetry broken complex coacervation

TL;DR

This paper investigates charge symmetry broken complex coacervation driven by pH-controlled charge regulation, revealing how ion adsorption and charge asymmetry induce phase separation in macroionic systems.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework combining density-functional and Poisson-Boltzmann models to explain charge symmetry breaking in coacervation.

Findings

Charge symmetry breaking causes phase separation.

pH controls the transition between phases.

Ion adsorption influences macroion interactions.

Abstract

Liquid-liquid phase separation has emerged as one of the important paradigms in the chemical physics as well as biophysics of charged macromolecular systems. We elucidate an equilibrium phase separation mechanism based on charge regulation, i.e., protonation-deprotonation equilibria controlled by pH, in an idealized macroion system which can serve as a proxy for simple coacervation. First, a low-density density-functional calculation reveals the dominance of two-particle configurations coupled by ion adsorption on neighboring macroions. Then a binary cell model, solved on the Debye-H\"uckel as well as the full nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann level, unveils the charge-symmetry breaking as inducing the phase separation between low- and high-density phases as a function of pH. These results can be identified as a charge symmetry broken complex coacervation between chemically identical macroions.