Mixing-demixing transition and void formation in quasi-2D binary mixtures on a sphere

TL;DR

This paper investigates how miscibility and adsorbing particles influence the structure, mixing, and void formation in binary mixtures on spherical surfaces, revealing transitions in domain structures and void size distributions.

Contribution

It introduces a new scalar measure, the geodesic mixing parameter, to distinguish mixing and demixing effects caused by adsorbing particles on spherical binary mixtures.

Findings

Adsorbing particles induce demixing and domain formation.

Void size distributions transition from exponential to fat-tailed.

The geodesic mixing parameter effectively characterizes mixing states.

Abstract

Motivated by observations of heterogeneous domain structure on the surface of cells and vesicles and by domain formation due to the adsorption of complex molecules onto composite membranes, we consider a minimal quasi 2D-model to describe the structure of binary mixtures on the surface of a spherical particle. We study the effect of miscibility and adsorbing particle (AP) addition on the mixture structure. We define a new scalar quantity, the geodesic mixing parameter $\Xi$, through which we detail the effect of miscibility and the role of preferential affinity of APs with one of the two components of the mixture, distinguishing unambiguously between mixing and demixing solely induced by APs. Finally, by inspecting the distributions of void sizes, we show how void formation is ruled by miscibility and AP-mixture interactions, which control the transition from exponentially-tailed to fat-tailed distributions.