Mobility-induced kinetic effects in multicomponent mixtures

TL;DR

This paper reviews how kinetics influence the behavior of multicomponent mixtures, highlighting the complex interplay between thermodynamics, crowding, and collective motion, and discusses current approaches and future challenges.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of kinetic effects in multicomponent mixtures, emphasizing differences from binary systems and exploring both equilibrium and non-equilibrium phenomena.

Findings

Multicomponent mixtures exhibit complex kinetic and thermodynamic interplay.

Crowding effects lead to long-lived non-equilibrium structures.

Multiple timescales depend on underlying kinetics.

Abstract

We give an overview exploring the role of kinetics in multicomponent mixtures. Compared to the most commonly studied binary (single species plus solvent) case, multicomponent fluids show a rich interplay between kinetics and thermodynamics due to the possibility of fractionation, interdiffusion of mixture components and collective motion. This leads to a competition between multiple timescales that change depending on the underlying kinetics. At high densities, crowding effects are relevant and non-equilibrium structures can become long-lived. We present the main approaches for the study of kinetic effects in multicomponents mixtures, including the role of crowding, and explore their consequences for equilibrium and non-equilibrium scenarios. We conclude by identifying the main challenges in the field.