Polyelectrolyte-mediated surface interactions

The current understanding of interactions between surfaces coated with polyelectrolytes is reviewed. Experimental data obtained with various surface force techniques are reported and compared with theoretical predictions. The majority of the studies concerned with interactions between polyelectrolyte-coated surfaces deal with polyelectrolytes adsorbed to oppositely charged surfaces, and this is also the main focus of this review. However, we also consider polyelectrolytes adsorbed to uncharged surfaces and to similarly charged surfaces, areas where theoretical predictions are available, but relevant experimental data are mostly lacking. We also devote sections to interactions between polyelectrolyte brush-layers and to interactions due to non-adsorbing polyelectrolytes. Here, a sufficient amount of both theoretical and experimental studies are reported to allow us to comment on the agreement between theory and experiments. A topic of particular interest is the presence of trapped non-equilibrium states that often is encountered in experiments, but difficult to treat theoretically.