Lattice-Boltzmann simulations of the electrophoretic stretching of polyelectrolytes: the importance of hydrodynamic interactions.

In this article we examine the electrophoretic stretching of polyelectrolytes between parallel uncharged plates using molecular dynamics simulations. We compare simulations where the fluid is modeled implicitly using a Langevin thermostat, which ignore hydrodynamic interactions, to simulations with an explicit lattice-Boltzmann fluid that take hydrodynamic interactions into account. The difference between simulations with and without hydrodynamic interactions is larger for longer polyelectrolytes, as one would expect. Furthermore, we present simulation results which show that the effects of hydrodynamic interactions are reduced as the distance between the confining plates is diminished. The main result of our study is that hydrodynamic interactions play a larger role in systems with a shorter Debye length, in contrast to conventional wisdom.