The paper is focused on the formation of hydroxyapatite nanoparticles (HAp) in polyelectrolyte-modified microemulsions, in a microemulsion template phase consisting of cyclohexane, water, cationic surfactant and cosurfactant, in the presence of Na-polyacrylate (PAA) as an anionic polyelectrolyte. It is shown that PAA, can be incorporated into the individual inverse microemulsion droplets. The m...

Gamma irradiation of aqueous solutions of a synthetic heparinoid polyelectrolyte results in the formation of hydrogels, varying in water content and mechanical strength. The equilibrium water content and the mechanical strength of the hydrogels are dependent on the initial polyelectrolyte concentration, the molecular weight of the polyelectrolyte, the percentage of double bonds in the polyelect...

We report results from a molecular dynamics simulation on the conformations of a long flexible polyelectrolyte complexed to a charged sphere, both negatively charged, in the presence of neutralizing counterions in the strong Coulomb coupling regime. The structure of this complex is very sensitive to the charge density of the polyelectrolyte. For a fully charged polyelectrolyte the polymer forms...

Common methods for fabrication of polyelectrolyte microcapsules rely on a multi-step process. We propose a single-step approach to generate polyelectrolyte microcapsules with 1-2 μm shells based on polyelectrolyte complexation across a water/oil droplet interface and study the effect of parameters controlling the polyelectrolyte complexation on shell thickness.

The formation of polyelectrolyte multilayers (PEMs) for the first time, two decades ago, demonstrating the assembly on charged substrates in a very simple and efficient way, has proven to be a reliable method to obtain structures tunable at the nanometer scale. Much effort has been put into the assembly of these structures for their use in biological applications. A number of these efforts have...

A polyelectrolyte complex (PEC) micelle-based siRNA delivery system was developed for treatment of cancer. A PEGylated siRNA targeting human vascular endothelial growth factor (hVEGF) was synthesized. The hVEGF expression was almost completely inhibited in vitro as well as in vivo by treating prostate cancer cells with the PEC micelles formed from the interaction between the conjugate and polye...

Chemical charging of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and graphenes to generate soluble salts shows great promise as a processing route for electronic applications, but raises fundamental questions. The reduction potentials of highly-charged nanocarbon polyelectrolyte ions were investigated by considering their chemical reactivity towards metal salts/complexes in forming metal nanopartic...

We investigate polyelectrolyte bridging interactions mediated by charged, flexible, polyelectrolyte chains between fixed cylindrical macroions of opposite charge in a two-dimensional hexagonal crystalline array. We show that in the asymptotic regime of small macroion density, the polyelectrolyte-mediated attraction is long range, falling off approximately linearly with the macroion array densit...