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Register a new userMinimal microscopic model for liquid polyamorphism and water-like anomalies
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Added by
Fr\\'ed\\'eric Caupin
Publication date
2021
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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Liquid polyamorphism is the intriguing possibility for a single component substance to exist in multiple liquid phases. We propose a minimal model for this phenomenon. Starting with a classical binary lattice model with critical azeotropy and liquid-liquid demixing, we allow interconversion of the two species, turning the system into a single-component fluid with two states differing in energy and entropy. Changing one interaction parameter allows to continuously switch from a liquid-liquid transition, terminated by a critical point, to a singularity-free scenario, exhibiting water-like anomalies but without polyamorphism. This resolves a controversy about how a liquid-liquid critical point can be found or not in simulations. The model provides a unified theoretical framework to describe supercooled water and a variety of polyamorphic liquids with water-like anomalies.
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Deeply supercooled water exhibits complex dynamics with large density fluctuations, ice coarsening and characteristic time scales extending from picoseconds to milliseconds. Here, we discuss implications of these time scales as they pertain to two-phase coexistence and to molecular simulations of supercooled water. Specifically, we argue that it is possible to discount liquid-liquid criticality because the time scales imply that correlation lengths for such behavior would be bounded by no more than a few nanometers. Similarly, it is possible to discount two-liquid coexistence because the time scales imply a bounded interfacial free energy that cannot grow in proportion to a macroscopic surface area. From time scales alone, therefore, we see that coexisting domains of differing density in supercooled water can be no more than nano-scale transient fluctuations.
The well-known classical nucleation theory (CNT) for the free energy barrier towards formation of a nucleus of critical size of the new stable phase within the parent metastable phase fails to take into account the influence of other metastable phases having density/order intermediate between the parent metastable phase and the final stable phase. This lacuna can be more serious than capillary approximation or spherical shape assumption made in CNT. This issue is particularly significant in ice nucleation because liquid water shows rich phase diagram consisting of two (high and low density) liquid phases in supercooled state. The explanations of thermodynamic and dynamic anomalies of supercooled water often invoke the possible influence of a liquid-liquid transition between two metastable liquid phases. To investigate both the role of thermodynamic anomalies and presence of distinct metastable liquid phases in supercooled water on ice nucleation, we employ density functional theoretical approach to find nucleation free energy barrier in different regions of phase diagram. The theory makes a number of striking predictions, such as a dramatic lowering of nucleation barrier due to presence of a metastable intermediate phase and crossover in the dependence of free energy barrier on temperature near liquid-liquid critical point. These predictions can be tested by computer simulations as well as by controlled experiments.
We investigate ice polyamorphism in the context of the two-dimensional Mercedes-Benz model of water. We find a first-order phase transition between a crystalline phase and a high-density amorphous phase. Furthermore we find a reversible transformation between two amorphous structures of high and low density; however we find this to be a continuous and not an abrupt transition, as the low-density amorphous phase does not show structural stability. We discuss the origin of this behavior and its implications with regard to the minimal generic modeling of polyamorphism.
A smooth cut-off formulation of the Hierarchical Reference Theory (HRT) is developed and applied to a Yukawa fluid. The HRT equations are derived and numerically solved leading to: the expected renormalization group structure in the critical region, non classical critical exponents and scaling laws, a convex free energy in the whole phase diagram (including the two-phase region), finite compressibility at coexistence, together with a fully satisfactory comparison with available numerical simulations. This theory, which also guarantees the correct short range behavior of two body correlations, represents a major improvement over the existing liquid state theories.
Spherical truncations of Coulomb interactions in standard models for water permit efficient molecular simulations and can give remarkably accurate results for the structure of the uniform liquid. However truncations are known to produce significant errors in nonuniform systems, particularly for electrostatic properties. Local molecular field (LMF) theory corrects such truncations by use of an effective or restructured electrostatic potential that accounts for effects of the remaining long-ranged interactions through a density-weighted mean field average and satisfies a modified Poissons equation defined with a Gaussian-smoothed charge density. We apply LMF theory to three simple molecular systems that exhibit different aspects of the failure of a naive application of spherical truncations -- water confined between hydrophobic walls, water confined between atomically-corrugated hydrophilic walls, and water confined between hydrophobic walls with an applied electric field. Spherical truncations of 1/r fail spectacularly for the final system in particular, and LMF theory corrects the failings for all three. Further, LMF theory provides a more intuitive way to understand the balance between local hydrogen bonding and longer-ranged electrostatics in molecular simulations involving water.
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