Effective Pair Interactions and Structure in Liquid Noble Metals within Wills-Harrison and Bretonnet-Silbert Models

Recently, for calculating the effective pair interactions in liquid transition metals, we have developed an approach which includes the Wills-Harrison and Bretonnet-Silbert models as limit cases. Here, we apply this approach to noble liquid metals. The dependencies of pair potentials and corresponding MD-simulated pair correlation functions in pure liquid Cu, Ag and Au on the portion of the non-diagonal (with respect to the magnet quantum number) d-d-electron couplings in the metal under consideration are studied. The model provides a good agreement with experimental and ab initio data for pair correlation functions, structure factors and velocity autocorrelation functions.

Three- and Four-Site Models for Heavy Water: SPC/E-HW, TIP3P-HW, and TIP4P/2005-HW

Heavy water or deuterium oxide, D₂O, is used as solvent in various biophysical and chemical experiments. To model such experiments with molecular dynamics simulations, effective pair potentials for heavy water are required that reproduce the well-known physicochemical differences relative to light water. We present three effective pair potentials for heavy water, denoted SPC/E-HW, TIP3P-HW, and TIP4P/2005-HW. The models were parametrized by modifying widely used three- and four-site models for light water, with aim of maintaining the specific characteristics of the light water models. At room temperature, the SPC/E-HW and TIP3P-HW capture the modulations relative to light water of the mass and electron densities, heat of vaporization, diffusion coefficient, and water structure. TIP4P/2005-HW captures in addition the density of heavy water over a wide temperature range.

Three- and Four-Site Models for Heavy Water: SPC/E-HW, TIP3P-HW, and TIP4P/2005-HW

Heavy water or deuterium oxide, D₂O, is used as solvent in various biophysical and chemical experiments. To model such experiments with molecular dynamics simulations, effective pair potentials for heavy water are required that reproduce the well-known physicochemical differences relative to light water. We present three effective pair potentials for heavy water, denoted SPC/E-HW, TIP3P-HW, and TIP4P/2005-HW. The models were parametrized by modifying widely used three- and four-site models for light water, with aim of maintaining the specific characteristics of the light water models. At room temperature, the SPC/E-HW and TIP3P-HW capture the modulations relative to light water of the mass and electron densities, heat of vaporization, diffusion coefficient, and water structure. TIP4P/2005-HW captures in addition the density of heavy water over a wide temperature range.

Anisotropic electrostatic screening of charged colloids in nematic solvents

The physical behavior of anisotropic charged colloids is determined by their material dielectric anisotropy, affecting colloidal self-assembly, biological function, and even out-of-equilibrium behavior. However, little is known about anisotropic electrostatic screening, which underlies all electrostatic effective interactions in such soft or biological materials. In this work, we demonstrate anisotropic electrostatic screening for charged colloidal particles in a nematic electrolyte. We show that material anisotropy behaves markedly different from particle anisotropy. The electrostatic potential and pair interactions decay with an anisotropic Debye screening length, contrasting the constant screening length for isotropic electrolytes. Charged dumpling-shaped near-spherical colloidal particles in a nematic medium are used as an experimental model system to explore the effects of anisotropic screening, demonstrating competing anisotropic elastic and electrostatic effective pair interactions for colloidal surface charges tunable from neutral to high, yielding particle-separated metastable states. Generally, our work contributes to the understanding of electrostatic screening in nematic anisotropic media.

Temperature-dependent structure of molten eutectic Cu37Sb63

Quoted measurements of viscosity and our results of electrical resistivity experiments indicate two anomalous changes of physical properties take place in molten eutectic Cu37Sb63. Effective pair inter-ionic potentials evaluated using the hyper-netted chain theory further confirms the presence of two discontinuous structural transitions within the ranges from 1273K to 1073K and from 1073K to 903K, respectively. Moreover, the result of electrical resistivity experiments suggests the two structural transitions for molten Cu37Sb63 are reversible.