Solid-to-solid isostructural transition in the hard sphere/attractive Yukawa system

TL;DR

This paper investigates a solid-to-solid phase transition in a hard sphere system with attractive Yukawa interactions, using density functional theory, and compares it with square well potentials to understand the influence of potential range.

Contribution

It introduces a thermodynamically consistent density functional approach to study isostructural transitions in Yukawa systems and compares results with square well potentials to analyze effects of potential form.

Findings

Good agreement with simulations for transition properties

Phase diagram evolution depends on the attractive potential range

Attractive potential form influences the solid-solid transition

Abstract

A thermodynamically consistent density functional-perturbation theory is used to study the isostructural solid-to-solid transition which takes place in the hard sphere/attractive Yukawa system when the Yukawa tail is sufficiently short-ranged. A comparison with results for the square well potential allows us to study the effect of the attractive potential form on the solid-solid transition. Reasonable agreement with simulations is found for the main transition properties as well as for the phase diagram evolution with the the range of the attractive potential.