Strongly charged flexible polyelectrolytes in poor solvents—from stable spheres to necklace chains

We present a first set of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of solutions of strongly charged, salt-free polyelectrolyte chains in poor solvent with explicit counterions. As a function of concentration the regime from dominating electrostatic interaction to strong screening is covered. The conformations vary from strongly stretched rods to isolated, stable collapsed chains involving counterion condensation