Role of length-polydispersity on the phase behavior of freely-rotating hard-rectangle fluid

Abstract

We used the Density Functional formalism, in particular the Scaled Particle Theory, applied to a length-polydisperse hard-rectangular fluid to study its phase behavior as a function of the mean particle aspect ratio (${\kappa }_0$) and polydispersity (${\Delta }_0$). The numerical solutions of the coexistence equations were calculated by transforming the original problem with infinite degrees of freedoms to a finite set of equations for the amplitudes of the Fourier expansion of the moments of the density profiles. We divided the study into two parts: The first one is devoted to the calculation of the phase diagrams in the packing fraction (${\eta }_0$)- ${\kappa }_0$ plane for a fixed ${\Delta }_0$ and selecting parent distribution functions with exponential (the Schulz distribution) or Gaussian decays. In the second part we study the phase behavior in the ${\eta }_0$-${\Delta }_0$ plane for fixed ${\kappa }_0$ while ${\Delta }_0$ is changed. We characterize in detail the orientational ordering of particles and the fractionation of different species between the coexisting phases. Also we study the character (second vs. first order) of the Isotropic-Nematic phase transition as a function of polydispersity. We particularly focused on the stability of the Tetratic phase as a function of ${\kappa }_0$ and ${\Delta }_0$. The Isotropic-Nematic transition becomes strongly of first order when polydispersity is increased: the coexisting gap widens and the location of the tricritical point moves to higher values of ${\kappa }_0$ while the Tetratic phase is slightly destabilized with respect to the Nematic one. The results obtained here can be tested in experiments on shaken monolayers of granular rods.

14 pages, 13 figures

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Cited by in corpus (4)

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• Uniform phases in fluids of hard isosceles triangles: one component and binary mixtures
• Demixing and tetratic ordering in some binary mixtures of hard superellipses