We then neglected any f 0 terms, due to the long-range nature of the Coulomb potential u c,α,γ . However, the excluded volume contribution may be desirable for several reasons; most importantly, it can address the issue that the interaction energy diverges for completely overlapping particles (i.e. separated with zero distance). In addition, the excluded volume interactions between charged particles can become significant at high concentrations, in particular the densities seen in practice in coacervates. One possible way to address the effect of excluded volume, from Kudlay and Olvera de la Cruz, is to change the effective potential considered in the Ψ-bonds such that u c,α,γ (r) → u c,α,γ (r)(1 -e -b/r ). Here, b is a new length scale intended to represent the finite size of the salt and monomer charges in the solution. This has the desirable property that the energy of overlap does not diverge, and instead goes to a constant value. This is effectively a soft excluded volume effect. The other desirable aspect of this form of the potential is that it can be written in Fourier space: ûcO,α,γ (k