title: Molecular dynamics study of phase separation in fluids with chemical reactions.
abstract: We present results from the first d=3 molecular dynamics (MD) study of phase-separating fluid mixtures (AB) with simple chemical reactions (A⇌B). We focus on the case where the rates of forward and backward reactions are equal. The chemical reactions compete with segregation, and the coarsening system settles into a steady-state mesoscale morphology. However, hydrodynamic effects destroy the lamellar morphology which characterizes the diffusive case. This has important consequences for the phase-separating structure, which we study in detail. In particular, the equilibrium length scale (ℓ(eq)) in the steady state suggests a power-law dependence on the reaction rate ε:ℓ(eq)∼ε(-θ) with θ≃1.0.
authors.affiliation: School of Physical Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110067, India.
authors.forename: Raishma
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Krishnan
authors.affiliation: School of Physical Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110067, India.
authors.forename: Sanjay
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Puri