Driving forces behind ion-ion correlations

Within the primitive model of electrolytes, partitioning the system free energy into contributions from entropy and energy requires an explicit description of the temperature dependence of the dielectric constant epsilonr. Taking this into account, the authors find that the ion-ion correlation attraction between like charged macroions is governed by entropy and not energy as often argued. The authors have exemplified this via Monte Carlo simulations and show how [partial-derivative]epsilonr/[partial-derivative]T turns the “traditional” picture upside down.