Counterion-mediated electrostatic interactions between helical molecules

M. Kanduč, J. Dobnikar, R. Podgornik
2009 Soft Matter  
We study the interaction of two cylinders with helical charge distribution mediated by neutralizing counterions, by analyzing the separation as well as the azimuthal angle dependence of the interaction force in the weak and strong coupling limit. While the azimuthal dependence of the interaction in the weak coupling limit is overall small and mostly negligible, the strong coupling limit leads to qualitatively new features of the interaction, among others also to an orientationally dependent
more » ... mal configuration that is driven by angular dependence of the correlation attraction. We investigate the properties of this azimuthal ordering in detail and compare it to existing results.
doi:10.1039/b811795k fatcat:nipa5vlewnbw5bpme4yfac2umi