Approaching charged polymer brushes

Off-lattice MD-simulations of polyelectrolyte brushes in good solvent are compared with various different mean-field theories. We demonstrate the importance of excluded volume effects under the present solvent conditions, which had intentionally been left out in some of the classical mean-field approaches of Pincus or Zhuina et al. We evaluate the accuracy of the Debye-approximation in the simulations and of a recently introduced self-consistent-field theory by Biesheuvel et al. Finally, we discuss the significance of finite extensibility of the chains that is of particular importance for charged systems.