IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v5y2014i1d10.1038_ncomms5882.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Polymer collapse in miscible good solvents is a generic phenomenon driven by preferential adsorption

Author

Listed:
  • Debashish Mukherji

    (Max-Planck Institut für Polymerforschung)

  • Carlos M. Marques

    (Max-Planck Institut für Polymerforschung
    Institut Charles Sadron, Université de Strasbourg, CNRS)

  • Kurt Kremer

    (Max-Planck Institut für Polymerforschung)

Abstract

Water and alcohol, such as methanol or ethanol, are miscible and, individually, good solvents for poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAm), but this polymer precipitates in water–alcohol mixtures. The intriguing behaviour of solvent mixtures that cannot dissolve a given polymer or a given protein, while the same macromolecule dissolves well in each of the cosolvents, is called cononsolvency. It is a widespread phenomenon, relevant for many formulation steps in the physicochemical and pharmaceutical industry, that is usually explained by invoking specific chemical details of the mixtures: as such, it has so far eluded any generic explanation. Here, by using a combination of simulations and theory, we present a simple and universal treatment that requires only the preferential interaction of one of the cosolvents with the polymer. The results show striking quantitative agreement with experiments and chemically specific simulations, opening a new perspective towards an operational understanding of macromolecular solubility.

Suggested Citation

  • Debashish Mukherji & Carlos M. Marques & Kurt Kremer, 2014. "Polymer collapse in miscible good solvents is a generic phenomenon driven by preferential adsorption," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 5(1), pages 1-6, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms5882
    DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5882
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5882
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/ncomms5882?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zeyu Liu & Youshi Lan & Jianfeng Jia & Yiyun Geng & Xiaobin Dai & Litang Yan & Tongyang Hu & Jing Chen & Krzysztof Matyjaszewski & Gang Ye, 2022. "Multi-scale computer-aided design and photo-controlled macromolecular synthesis boosting uranium harvesting from seawater," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms5882. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.