Confinement-induced demixing and crystallization

TL;DR

This study uses simulations to explore how confinement influences phase behavior in size-disperse hard-sphere fluids, revealing induced crystallization, novel structures, and size-based demixing, with implications for controlling material properties.

Contribution

It demonstrates how confinement induces crystallization and phase separation in size-disperse hard-sphere fluids, providing new insights into structure formation under confinement.

Findings

Confinement induces layered hexagonal and honeycomb structures.

Crystallization prevents glass formation at lower densities than in bulk.

Solid-to-solid transitions occur with varying wall separation, affecting particle size distribution.

Abstract

We simulate a strongly size-disperse hard-sphere fluid confined between two parallel, hard walls. We find that confinement induces crystallization into n-layered hexagonal lattices and a novel honeycomb-shaped structure, facilitated by fractionation. The onset of freezing prevents the formation of a stable glass phase and occurs at much smaller packing fraction than in bulk. Varying the wall separation triggers solid-to-solid transitions and a systematic change of the size-distribution of crystalline particles, which we rationalize using a semi-quantitative theory. We show that the crystallization can be exploited in a wedge geometry to demix particles of different sizes.