Landau functional for confined amphiphilic systems

Bistability in a self-assembling system confined by elastic walls: exact results in a one-dimensional lattice model

The impact of confinement on self-assembly of particles interacting with short-range attraction and long-range repulsion potential is studied for thermodynamic states corresponding to local ordering of clusters or layers in the bulk. Exact and asymptotic expressions for the local density and for the effective potential between the confining surfaces are obtained for a one-dimensional lattice model introduced by J. Pȩkalski et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 138, 144903 (2013)]. The simple asymptotic formulas are shown to be in good quantitative agreement with exact results for slits containing at least 5 layers. We observe that the incommensurability of the system size and the average distance between the clusters or layers in the bulk leads to structural deformations that are different for different values of the chemical potential μ. The change of the type of defects is reflected in the dependence of density on μ that has a shape characteristic for phase transitions. Our results may help to avoid misinterpretation of the change of the type of defects as a phase transition in simulations of inhomogeneous systems. Finally, we show that a system confined by soft elastic walls may exhibit bistability such that two system sizes that differ approximately by the average distance between the clusters or layers are almost equally probable. This may happen when the equilibrium separation between the soft boundaries of an empty slit corresponds to the largest stress in the confined self-assembling system.

Distribution of ions near a charged selective surface in critical binary solvents

Near-critical binary mixtures containing ionic solutes near a charged wall preferentially adsorbing one component of the solvent are studied. Within the Landau-Ginzburg approach extended to include electrostatic interactions and the chemical preference of ions for one component of the solvent, we obtain a simple form for the leading-order correction to the Debye-Hückel theory result for the charge density profile. Our result shows that critical adsorption influences significantly distribution of ions near the wall. This effect may have important implications for the screening of electrostatic interactions between charged surfaces immersed in binary near-critical solvents.

Quasiwetting on spherical solid surfaces by oil-water-amphiphile mixtures

We study the wetting behavior on spherical walls by ternary mixtures of oil, water, and an amphiphile. We use the Ginzburg-Landau free energy with a single order parameter and find that there are different stable structures of the interface and that a quasiwetting transition is the mechanism involved in the transition among them. We calculate these wetting transitions for two sets of parameters in the bulk free energy which are known to show microemulsion behavior. The surface transitions are thin-thick first-order transitions (continuous transitions are absent), and the phase diagram in surface parameter space is constructed. For the first set of bulk parameters water, oil, and a microemulsion coexist, and we study the first-order transition where the oil phase wets the wall-microemulsion interface and its behavior as the radius of the wall becomes large. Therefore, we recover the known wetting transitions on a planar wall. In the second set of bulk parameters only water and oil coexist, and for some sizes of the solid wall, the oil phase wets the wall-water interface, and the phase behavior is extremely rich. We obtain a coexistence of four surface phases or two triple points followed by three lines of first-order transitions which end at three critical points depending on the radius of the surface. When there are micellar metastable solutions in bulk, the behavior of the thickness of the wetting layer of the oil phase as the radius of the spherical wall gets larger is nonmonotonic. We associate this behavior with the intrinsic micelle structure due to the spontaneous curvature of the model.