Effects of Non-Electrostatic Intermolecular Interactions on the Phase Behavior of pH-Sensitive Polyelectrolyte Complexes

Polyelectrolyte complexes (PECs) offer enormous material tunability and desirable functionalities, and consequently have found broad utility in biomedical and material industries. While poly­(acrylic acid) (PAA) and poly­(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH) are a commonly used pairing, various aspects of the phase behavior of PAA–PAH complexes have not been sufficiently quantified. We present a comprehensive experimental study depicting the binodal phase boundaries for the PAA–PAH complexes prepared under acidic, neutral, and basic conditions using thermogravimetric analysis, turbidimetry, and optical microscopy. Under neutral and basic conditions, phase behaviors of the complexes were largely similar to one another and followed general expectations of PEC phase behavior, except for unusually high resistance to disruption of the complex with added salt. Stable complexes are observed up to 4 M NaCl concentrations. Under acidic conditions, strikingly different phase behaviors of the PAA–PAH complexes were observed. The polymer content in the complex phase increased initially, followed by an expected decrease as salt was added to the complexes. This behavior may result from a combination of associative phase separation of PAA and PAH chains, influenced by electrostatic interactions, and segregative phase separation, which can be ascribed to the influence of a combination of the hydrophobic interactions of the aliphatic polymer backbone and the interpolymer hydrogen bonding of un-ionized acrylic monomer units. Our systematic investigations over a range of pH detailing these discrepancies in the PAA–PAH phase behavior are expected to clarify the inconsistencies among the reports in the literature and provide the material design strategies for practical use of the PAA–PAH complexes and multilayer assemblies.