Displacement Potentials and Bending of Rod-like Polyelectrolytes

Abstract

In 1954, Jensen et al. ^1,2 discovered an electromechanical property of solutions of potassium hyaluronate. They named the effect ‘flow-potential’, but agreed later on to change the name into ‘displacement-potential’. The original measurements were performed with techniques including amplification. Experiments in 1959 by us³ (C. E. Jensen died in November 1959) showed that the classical potentiometric technique without amplification was quite sufficient to measure the potentials. The new measurements corroborated the original findings. Beyond this Jensen and Vilstrup discovered that the potentials were independent of the distance between the electrodes⁴.