Charged Particles on Surfaces: Coexistence of Dilute Phases and Periodic Structures on Membranes

Abstract

We consider a mixture of one neutral and two oppositely charged types of molecules confined to a surface. Using analytical techniques and molecular dynamics simulations, we construct the phase diagram of the system and exhibit the coexistence between a patterned solid phase and a charge-dilute phase. The patterns in the solid phase arise from competition between short-range immiscibility and long-range electrostatic attractions between the charged species. The coexistence between phases leads to observations of stable patterned domains immersed in a neutral matrix background.

5 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Competing interactions in two dimensional Coulomb systems: Surface charge heterogeneities in co-assembled cationic-anionic incompatible mixtures

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Mediation of Long-Range Attraction Selectively between Negatively-Charged Colloids on Surfaces by Solvation
• Ion condensation on charged patterned surfaces