Binary hard sphere mixtures, solid-fluid

Solid-fluid phase diagrams of binary hard sphere mixtures have been studied quite extensively using MC simulations. Kranendonk and Frenkel [202-205] and Kofke [206] have studied the solid-fluid equilibrium for binary hard sphere mixtures for the case of substitutionally disordered solid solutions. Several interesting features emerge from these studies. Azeotropy and solid-solid immiscibility appear very quickly in the phase diagram as the size ratio is changed from unity. This is primarily a consequence of the nonideality in the solid phase. Another aspect of these results concerns the empirical Hume-Rothery rule, developed in the context of metal alloy phase equilibrium, that mixtures of spherical molecules with diameter ratios below about 0.85 should exhibit only limited solubility in the solid phase [207]. The simulation results for hard sphere tend to be consistent with this rule. However, it should be noted that the Hume-Rothery rule was formulated in terms of the ratio of nearest neighbor distances in the pure metals rather than hard sphere diameters. Thus, this observation should be interpreted as an indication that molecular size effects are important in metal alloy equilibria rather than as a quantitative confirmation of the Hume-Rothery rule. 

The Camahan-Starling equation of state (4.5.4) has been extended by Mansoori et al. [16] to binary mixtures of hard spheres having different diameters. Binary mixtures of hard spheres exhibit fluid-solid phase transitions at packing fractions somewhat larger than that for the pure substance that is, at T) > 0.5. The exact state for the transition depends on composition and on the relative sizes of the spheres. We expect the density of the transition to increase as the size disparity increases the limited computer simulation data available support this expectation [17]. Certain kinds of hard-sphere mixtures are the simplest substances to exhibit a fluid-fluid phase transition [17], but those phase transitions are more like liquid-liquid than vapor-liquid. Analytic representations of the Z(r ) for hard-sphere and other hard-body fluids have been critically reviewed by Boublik and Nezbeda [18]. 

The effect of a structured surface on the crystallization of hard-sphere colloids has been extensively studied in experiments [87, 88, 89, 90], These experiments indicate that crystallization on a template is induced at densities below freezing. This finding is supported by computer simulations of hard spheres in contact with a patterned substrate, by Heni and Lowen [91], These simulations indicate that surface freezing already sets in 29% below the coexistence pressure. Furthermore the effect of a surface on crystallization has also been studied in mixtures of binary hard-spheres [92, 93] and colloid-polymer mixtures [94, 95, 96], In both systems surface crystallization was found to take place before bulk fluid-solid coexistence. In the systems studied in Refs. [92, 93, 94, 95, 96], depletion forces favor the accumulation of the larger component on the wall, and this should facilitate surface crystallization [97]. 

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