Phys Rev E. 2017 Oct;96(4):042607. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.96.042607. Epub 2017 Oct 20.

Phase behavior and bulk structural properties of a microphase former with anisotropic competing interactions: A density functional theory study.

Physical review. E

Daniel Stopper, Roland Roth

PMID: 29347593 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.96.042607

Abstract

Using classical density functional theory, we investigate systems exhibiting interactions where a short-range anisotropic attractive force competes with a long-range spherically symmetric repulsive force. The former is modelled within Wertheim's first-order perturbation theory for patchy particles, and the repulsive part is assumed to be a Yukawa potential which is taken into account via a mean-field approximation. From previous studies of systems with spherically symmetric competing interactions, it is well known that such systems can exhibit stable bulk cluster phases (microphase separation) provided that the repulsion is sufficiently weak compared to the attraction. For the present model system, we find rich phase diagrams including both reentrant clustering and liquid-gas binodals. In particular, the model predicts inhomogeneous bulk phases at extremely low packing fractions, which cannot be observed in systems with isotropic competing interactions.

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• Journal Article