Gum Arabic (A) powder was first dissolved in deionized water,and then pectin (P) powder was added to the solution with strongstirring. After the powders had totally dissolved, chitosan (C) pow-der was slowly added into the solution with gentle stirring toensure a uniform distribution. Finally, acetic acid (HAc) was slowlyadded with proper mixing to dissolve the chitosan powder andthus form various C/P/A PEC solutions (Table 1). The final total con-centrations of the C/P/A polyelectrolytes and acetic acid in mixedsolution were 1 wt% and 0.2 M, respectively. When studying theprocess-dependent appearance of the PEC solutions (Section 3.1),two other processes were used to prepare the mixed solutions, asdescribed in Fig. 1. To characterize the PEC solutions, homogeneousC/A and C/P PEC solutions and pure C, P, and A solutions were alsoprepared for comparative purposes.