Classification of the ejection mechanisms of charged macromolecules from liquid droplets
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The relation between the charge state of a macromolecule and its ejection mechanism from droplets is one of the important questions in electrospray ionization methods. In this article, effects of solvent-solute interaction on the manifestation of the charge induced instability in a droplet are examined. We studied the instabilities in a prototype system of a droplet comprised of charged poly(ethylene glycol) and methanol, acetonitrile, and water solvents. We observed instances of three, previously only conjectured, [S. Consta, J. Phys. Chem. B 114, 5263 (2010)] mechanisms of macroion ejection. The mechanism of ejection of charged macroion in methanol is reminiscent of "pearl" model in polymer physics. In acetonitrile droplets, the instability manifests through formation of solvent spines around the solvated macroion. In water, we find that the macroion is ejected from the droplet through contiguous extrusion of a part of the chain. The difference in the morphology of the instabilities is attributed to the interplay between forces arising from the macroion solvation energy and the surface energy of the droplet interface. For the contiguous extrusion of a charged macromolecule from a droplet, we demonstrate that the proposed mechanism leads to ejection of the macromolecule from droplets with sizes well below the Rayleigh limit. The ejected macromolecule may hold charge significantly higher than that suggested by prevailing theories. The simulations reveal new mechanisms of macroion evaporation that differ from conventional charge residue model and ion evaporation mechanisms.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".