No Arabic abstract
The movement of the particles in a capillary electrophoretic system under electroosmotic flow was modeled using Monte Carlo simulation with Metropolis algorithm. Two different cases, with repulsive and attractive interactions between molecules were taken into consideration. The simulation was done using a spin-like system where the interactions between the nearest and second closest neighbors were considered in two separate steps of the modeling study. A total of 20 different cases with different rate of interactions for both repulsive and attractive interactions were modeled. The movement of the particles through the capillary is defined as current. At a low interaction level between molecules, a regular electroosmotic flow is obtained, on the other hand, with increasing interactions between molecules the current shows a phase transition behavior. The results also show that a modular electroosmotic flow can be obtained for separations by tuning the ratio between molecular interactions and electric field strength.
The latest trend in studies of modern electronically and/or optically active materials is to provoke phase transformations induced by high electric fields or by short (femtosecond) powerful optical pulses. The systems of choice are cooperative electronic states whose broken symmetries give rise to topological defects. For typical quasi-one-dimensional architectures, those are the microscopic solitons taking from electrons the major roles as carriers of charge or spin. Because of the long-range ordering, the solitons experience unusual super-long-range forces leading to a sequence of phase transitions in their ensembles: the higher-temperature transition of the confinement and the lower one of aggregation into macroscopic walls. Here we present results of an extensive numerical modeling for ensembles of both neutral and charged solitons in both two- and three-dimensional systems. We suggest a specific Monte Carlo algorithm preserving the number of solitons, which substantially facilitates the calculations, allows to extend them to the three-dimensional case and to include the important long-range Coulomb interactions. The results confirm the first confinement transition, except for a very strong Coulomb repulsion, and demonstrate a pattern formation at the second transition of aggregation.
Understanding how electrolyte solutions behave out of thermal equilibrium is a long-standing endeavor in many areas of chemistry and biology. Although mean-field theories are widely used to model the dynamics of electrolytes, it is also important to characterize the effects of fluctuations in these systems. In a previous work, we showed that the dynamics of the ions in a strong electrolyte that is driven by an external electric field can generate long-ranged correlations manifestly different from the equilibrium screened correlations; in the nonequilibrium steady state, these correlations give rise to a novel long-range fluctuation-induced force (FIF). Here, we extend these results by considering the dynamics of the strong electrolyte after it is quenched from thermal equilibrium upon the application of a constant electric field. We show that the asymptotic long-distance limit of both charge and density correlations is generally diffusive in time. These correlations give rise to long-ranged FIFs acting on the neutral confining plates with long-time regimes that are governed by power-law temporal decays toward the steady-state value of the force amplitude. These findings show that nonequilibrium fluctuations have nontrivial implications on the dynamics of objects immersed in a driven electrolyte, and they could be useful for exploring new ways of controlling long-distance forces in charged solutions.
Inverse phase transitions are striking phenomena in which an apparently more ordered state disorders under cooling. This behavior can naturally emerge in tricritical systems on heterogeneous networks and it is strongly enhanced by the presence of disassortative degree correlations. We show it both analytically and numerically, providing also a microscopic interpretation of inverse transitions in terms of freezing of sparse subgraphs and coupling renormalization.
We study lattice gas systems on the honeycomb lattice where particles exclude neighboring sites up to order $k$ ($k=1ldots5$) from being occupied by another particle. Monte Carlo simulations were used to obtain phase diagrams and characterize phase transitions as the system orders at high packing fractions. For systems with first neighbors exclusion (1NN), we confirm previous results suggesting a continuous transition in the 2D-Ising universality class. Exclusion up to second neighbors (2NN) lead the system to a two-step melting process where, first, a high density columnar phase undergoes a first order phase transition with non-standard scaling to a solid-like phase with short range ordered domains and, then, to fluid-like configurations with no sign of a second phase transition. 3NN exclusion, surprisingly, shows no phase transition to an ordered phase as density is increased, staying disordered even to packing fractions up to 0.98. The 4NN model undergoes a continuous phase transition with critical exponents close to the 3-state Potts model. The 5NN system undergoes two first order phase transitions, both with non-standard scaling. We, also, propose a conjecture concerning the possibility of more than one phase transition for systems with exclusion regions further than 5NN based on geometrical aspects of symmetries.
We report on the electric field control of magnetic phase transition temperatures in multiferroic Ni3V2O8 thin films. Using magnetization measurements, we find that the phase transition temperature to the canted antiferromagnetic state is suppressed by 0.2 K in an electric field of 30 MV/m, as compared to the unbiased sample. Dielectric measurements show that the transition temperature into the magnetic state associated with ferroelectric order increases by 0.2 K when the sample is biased at 25 MV/m. This electric field control of the magnetic transitions can be qualitatively understood using a mean field model incorporating a tri-linear coupling between the magnetic order parameters and spontaneous polarization.