Impact of Chemically Specific Interactions between Anions and Weak Polyacids on Chain Ionization, Conformations, and Solution Energetics

The presence of salts in a solution containing weak polyelectrolytes is known to modify both their titration behavior and conformations due to electrostatic screening. Instead, little is currently known about the changes induced by chemically specific interactions (e.g., charged hydrogen bonds, c-H-bonds). To investigate this aspect, we simulated the titration of weak polyacids with a primitive model and Monte Carlo methods in the presence of monovalent salts whose anions are capable of forming c-H-bonds with associated acid groups. The interaction between anions and weak polyacids (e.g., poly(acrylic acid)) substantially hampers ionization at low pH despite the somewhat limited number of coordinated anions, whereas it has a limited impact once pH > pKa + 2 due to a progressive anion decoordination. Importantly, the suppression of ionization appears extremely local in nature, with different chain segments differing in pKa by up to 1.3 units. As for chain conformations, c-H-bonds reduce the average sizes of polyacids independently of their structure as a consequence of multidentate binding or multiarm coordination in starlike species. Analyzing the length of chain segments with all monomers coordinated or uncoordinated has also evidenced that anion binding is extremely local in nature. The energetic analysis of c-H-bond formation suggests that polyacid chemical potential may be strongly lowered (up to -0.7 kcal/mol per monomer), the impact of such results on a few phenomena relevant for the physical chemistry of polyacid-containing solutions being analyzed in some detail.