Poor Solvent Polyelectrolytes

Using extensive Molecular dynamics simulations we study the behavior of polyelectrolytes in poor solvents, where we take explicitely care of the counterions. The resulting pearl-necklace structures are subject to strong conformational uctuations. These lead to small signatures in the form factor and the force-extension relation, which is a severe obstacle for experimental observations. In addition we study how the necklace collapses as a function of Bjerrum length. At last we demonstrate that the position of the rst peak in the inter-chain structure factor varies with the monomer density as 0:35 m for all densities, which shows a pertinent dierent behavior when compared to polyelectrolyte solutions in good solvent