Amphiphile Adsorption on Rigid Polyelectrolytes

A theory is presented which quantitatively accounts for the cooperative adsorption of cationic surfactants to anionic polyelectrolytes. For high salt concentration, we find that the critical adsorption concentration (CAC) is a bilinear function of the polyion monomer and salt concentrations, with the coefficients dependent only on the type of surfactant used. The results presented in the paper might be useful for designing more efficient gene delivery systems.