Chemical Potential Differences in the Macroscopic Limit from Fluctuations in Small Systems

Breakdown of Langmuir Adsorption Isotherm in Small Closed Systems

For more than a century, monolayer adsorptions in which adsorbate molecules and adsorbing sites behave ideally have been successfully described by Langmuir's adsorption isotherm. For example, the amount of adsorbed material, as a function of concentration of the material which is not adsorbed, obeys Langmuir's equation. In this paper, we argue that this relation is valid only for macroscopic systems. However, when particle numbers of adsorbate molecules and/or adsorbing sites are small, Langmuir's model fails to describe the chemical equilibrium of the system. This is because the kinetics of forming, or the probability of observing, occupied sites arises from two-body interactions, and as such, ought to include cross-correlations between particle numbers of the adsorbate and adsorbing sites. The effect of these correlations, as reflected by deviations in predicting composition when correlations are ignored, increases with decreasing particle numbers and becomes substantial when only few adsorbate molecules, or adsorbing sites, are present in the system. In addition, any change that augments the fraction of occupied sites at equilibrium (e.g., smaller volume, lower temperature, or stronger adsorption energy) further increases the discrepancy between observed properties of small systems and those predicted by Langmuir's theory. In contrast, for large systems, these cross-correlations become negligible, and therefore when expressing properties involving two-body processes, it is possible to consider independently the concentration of each component. By applying statistical mechanics concepts, we derive a general expression of the equilibrium constant for adsorption. It is also demonstrated that in ensembles in which total numbers of particles are fixed, the magnitudes of fluctuations in particle numbers alone can predict the average chemical composition of the system. Moreover, an alternative adsorption equation, predicting the average fraction of occupied sites from the value of the equilibrium constant, is proposed. All derived relations were tested against results obtained by Monte Carlo simulations.

Is there a granular potential?

Granular materials, such as sand or grain, exhibit many structural and dynamic characteristics similar to those observed in molecular systems, despite temperature playing no role in their properties. This has led to an effort to develop a statistical mechanics for granular materials that has focused on establishing an equivalent to the microcanonical ensemble and a temperature-like thermodynamic variable. Here, we expand on these ideas by introducing a granular potential into the Edwards ensemble, as an analogue to the chemical potential, and explore its properties using a simple model of a granular system. A simple kinetic Monte Carlo simulation of the model shows the effect of mass transport leading to equilibrium and how this is connected to the redistribution of volume in the system. An exact analytical treatment of the model shows that the compactivity and the ratio of the granular potential to the compactivity determine the equilibrium between two open systems that are able to exchange volume and particles, and that mass moves from high to low values of this ratio. Analysis of the granular potential shows that adding a particle to the system increases the entropy at high compactivity, but decreases the entropy at low compactivity. Finally, we demonstrate the use of a small system thermodynamics method for the measurement of granular potential differences.

Computing chemical potentials of solutions from structure factors

The chemical potential of a component in a solution is defined as the free energy change as the amount of the component changes. Computing this fundamental thermodynamic property from atomistic simulations is notoriously difficult, because of the convergence issues in free energy methods and finite size effects. This paper presents the so-called S0 method, which can be used to obtain chemical potentials from static structure factors computed from equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations under the isothermal-isobaric ensemble. This new method is demonstrated on the systems of binary Lennard-Jones particles, urea--water mixtures, a NaCl aqueous solution, and a high-pressure carbon-hydrogen mixture.

Equation of state for confined fluids

Fluids confined in small volumes behave differently than fluids in bulk systems. For bulk systems, a compact summary of the system’s thermodynamic properties is provided by equations of state. However, there is currently a lack of successful methods to predict the thermodynamic properties of confined fluids by use of equations of state, since their thermodynamic state depends on additional parameters introduced by the enclosing surface. In this work, we present a consistent thermodynamic framework that represents an equation of state for pure, confined fluids. The total system is decomposed into a bulk phase in equilibrium with a surface phase. The equation of state is based on an existing, accurate description of the bulk fluid and uses Gibbs’ framework for surface excess properties to consistently incorporate contributions from the surface. We apply the equation of state to a Lennard-Jones spline fluid confined by a spherical surface with a Weeks–Chandler–Andersen wall-potential. The pressure and internal energy predicted from the equation of state are in good agreement with the properties obtained directly from molecular dynamics simulations. We find that when the location of the dividing surface is chosen appropriately, the properties of highly curved surfaces can be predicted from those of a planar surface. The choice of the dividing surface affects the magnitude of the surface excess properties and its curvature dependence, but the properties of the total system remain unchanged. The framework can predict the properties of confined systems with a wide range of geometries, sizes, interparticle interactions, and wall–particle interactions, and it is independent of ensemble. A targeted area of use is the prediction of thermodynamic properties in porous media, for which a possible application of the framework is elaborated.

Small size effects in open and closed systems: What can we learn from ideal gases about systems with interacting particles?

Small systems have higher surface area-to-volume ratios than macroscopic systems. The thermodynamics of small systems therefore deviates from the description of classical thermodynamics. One consequence of this is that properties of small systems can be dependent on the system's ensemble. By comparing the properties in grand canonical (open) and canonical (closed) systems, we investigate how a small number of particles can induce an ensemble dependence. Emphasis is placed on the insight that can be gained by investigating ideal gases. The ensemble equivalence of small ideal gas systems is investigated by deriving the properties analytically, while the ensemble equivalence of small systems with particles interacting via the Lennard-Jones or the Weeks-Chandler-Andersen potential is investigated through Monte Carlo simulations. For all the investigated small systems, we find clear differences between the properties in open and closed systems. For systems with interacting particles, the difference between the pressure contribution to the internal energy, and the difference between the chemical potential contribution to the internal energy, are both increasing with the number density. The difference in chemical potential is, with the exception of the density dependence, qualitatively described by the analytic formula derived for an ideal gas system. The difference in pressure, however, is not captured by the ideal gas model. For the difference between the properties in the open and closed systems, the response of increasing the particles' excluded volume is similar to the response of increasing the repulsive forces on the system walls. This indicates that the magnitude of the difference between the properties in open and closed systems is related to the restricted movement of the particles in the system. The work presented in this paper gives insight into the mechanisms behind ensemble in-equivalence in small systems, and illustrates how a simple statistical mechanical model, such as the ideal gas, can be a useful tool in these investigations.