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Analytical Solution to the Flory-Huggins Model.

Daoyuan QianThomas C T MichaelsTuomas P J Knowles
Published in: The journal of physical chemistry letters (2022)
A self-consistent analytical solution for binodal concentrations of the two-component Flory-Huggins phase separation model is derived. We show that this form extends the validity of the Ginzburg-Landau expansion away from the critical point to cover the whole phase space. Furthermore, this analytical solution reveals an exponential scaling law of the dilute phase binodal concentration as a function of the interaction strength and chain length. We demonstrate explicitly the power of this approach by fitting experimental protein liquid-liquid phase separation boundaries to determine the effective chain length and solute-solvent interaction energies. Moreover, we demonstrate that this strategy allows us to resolve differences in interaction energy contributions of individual amino acids. This analytical framework can serve as a new way to decode the protein sequence grammar for liquid-liquid phase separation.
Keyphrases
  • amino acid
  • liquid chromatography
  • binding protein
  • solid state
  • density functional theory