Criticality in confined ionic fluids

Abstract

A theory of a confined two dimensional electrolyte is presented. The positive and negative ions, interacting by a $1/r$ potential, are constrained to move on an interface separating two solvents with dielectric constants ${\epsilon }_1$ and ${\epsilon }_2$. It is shown that the Debye-Hückel type of theory predicts that the this 2d Coulomb fluid should undergo a phase separation into a coexisting liquid (high density) and gas (low density) phases. We argue, however, that the formation of polymer-like chains of alternating positive and negative ions can prevent this phase transition from taking place.

RevTex, no figures, in press Phys. Rev. E

References in corpus (1)

• What happened to the gas-liquid transition in the system of dipolar hard spheres?

Cited by in corpus (2)

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