Statistisk-mekaniska studier av fluider och vätskor

The programme comprises four main sub-projects.  (i) We will utilise recently developed theoretical tools to investigate temperature response in particle + polymer mixtures that display a Lower Critical Solution Temperature, LCST.

We will also continue our work on fluid-fluid phase transitions in pores, and at surfaces, at bulk supra-critical conditions (below the LCST).

This will include attempts to establish experimental verifications.(ii) We have, via recent simulations, established main mechanisms that govern dynamic phase transitions (AC field driven “jamming” and “laning”), in 3D systems containing charged spherical particles.

We will here also explore effects from particle shape and polarizability.(iii) Particles dispersed in a near-critical fluid, will interact via long-ranged critical Casimir forces.

We will expand our established many-body theory to explore concomitant many-body effects under these circumstances, but also in other systems where such interactions are important. (iv) We will investigate electrochemical behaviours of simple ionic liquid and electrolyte models, where the polarizability of the conducting electrodes play an important role.

A tantalizing prediction by statistical-mechanical density functional theory, is the possibility for structural phase transitions, where the phases display different surface charge density, but the same surface potential. Hence, the transitions can be regulated by the applied potential.