Computational modeling of diffusion in polymer solutions

We performed coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations of fully dissociated polyelectrolytes in the presence of monovalent and multivalent counterions and charged oligomers. The dynamics of these systems has been studied to follow internal dynamics of polyelectrolyte and counterions. The dynamics is presented via the mean square displacement which we obtain from the simulation trajectory and, moreover, via curves of Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS) obtained also from the simulation trajectory. FCS is an experimental technique which can be used to study condensation of counterions on polyelectrolytes. Therefore, we analyze the FCS curves and investigate applicability of various analytical models to fit these FCS curves. The aim of this work is a discussion about the fitting of the FCS curves and presentation of our observations for dynamics of counterions during condensation on the polyelectrolyte