Interfacial layering and capillary roughness in immiscible liquids.

The capillary roughness and the atomic density profiles of extended interfaces between immiscible liquids are determined as a function of the interface area by using molecular dynamics and Lennard-Jones (12-6) potentials. We found that with increasing area, the interface roughness diverges logarithmically, thus fitting the theoretical mean-field prediction. In systems small enough for the interfacial roughness not to blur the structural details, atomic density profiles across the fluid interface are layered with correlation length in the range of molecular correlations in liquids. On increasing the system size, the amplitude of the thermally excited position fluctuations of the interface increases, thus causing layering to rapidly vanish, if density profiles are computed without special care. In this work, we present and validate a simple method, operating in the direct space, for extracting from molecular dynamics trajectories the "intrinsic" structure of a fluid interface that is the local density profile of the interface cleaned from capillary wave effects. Estimated values of interfacial properties such as the tension, the intrinsic width, and the lower wavelength limit of position fluctuations are in agreement with results collected from the literature.

Combination of (100), (110) and (111) facets in MgO crystals shapes from dry to wet environment.

At the onset of dissolution in water, cubic MgO smoke crystals present (110) cuts of the edges of the cubes. Next, (111) facets progressively dominate the shape of the crystallites, which finally transform into truncated octahedra. The morphology of the crystallites that are derived from surface energies computed within the density functional theory (DFT), only involve (100) and (111) facets. We explain the unexpected (110) cuts via a "constrained" Wulff equilibrium shape that arises from a slower kinetics of formation of (111) facets than (110) ones. Experiment and theory fully agree on the hierarchy of hydroxylated surface energies: Gamma(111) < Gamma(100) < Gamma(110), both supporting the partial dissociation of water on MgO(100). Finally, from low to high P(H2O) (high to low T), DFT-based calculations predict a switch from Wulff shapes involving dry (100) facets, in which the (100)/(111) area ratio decreases upon increasing P(H2O), to shapes involving hydroxylated (100) surfaces, in which the above ratio increases with P(H2O).

Layered interfaces between immiscible liquids studied by density-functional theory and molecular-dynamics simulations.

We present a study of the structure in the interface between two immiscible liquids by density-functional theory and molecular-dynamics calculations. The liquids are modeled by Lennard-Jones potentials, which achieve immiscibility by suppressing the attractive interaction between unlike particles. The density profiles of the liquids display oscillations only in a limited part of the simple liquid-phase diagram (rho,T). When approaching the liquid-vapor coexistence, a significant depletion appears while the layering behavior of the density profile vanishes. By analogy with the liquid-vapor interface and the analysis of the adsorption this behavior is suggested to be strongly related to the drying transition.