On the microstructure of strongly coupled and highly asymmetric Coulomb mixtures

A binary mixture of hard-sphere polyions and point counterions is considered. It is shown that in the region of strong coupling, the symmetric Poisson–Boltzmann equation is capable of describing the counterion condensation near the polyion surface and the polyion–polyion attraction that was noticed in computer simulations of strongly coupled and highly asymmetric Coulomb fluids