Kinetic interfaces of patchy particles

TL;DR

This paper investigates the interface roughening and phase transitions during the irreversible adsorption of patchy particles, revealing universality classes and critical behavior influenced by particle attributes and interactions.

Contribution

It provides detailed analysis and new evidence linking the observed phase transitions to tricritical directed percolation and KPZ universality classes.

Findings

Tricritical point belongs to the tricritical directed percolation class.

Critical regime follows the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang with quenched disorder universality.

Interface roughening depends on patch correlations, flexibility, and interaction strength.

Abstract

We study the irreversible adsorption of patchy particles on substrates in the limit of advective mass transport. Recent numerical results show that the interface roughening depends strongly on the particle attributes, such as, patch-patch correlations, bond flexibility, and strength of the interactions, uncovering new absorbing phase transitions. Here, we revisit these results and discuss in detail the transitions. In particular, we present new evidence that the tricritical point, observed in systems of particles with flexible patches, is in the tricritical directed percolation universality class. A scaling analysis of the time evolution of the correlation length for the aggregation of patchy particles with distinct bonding energies confirms that the critical regime is in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang with quenched disorder universality class.