Monte Carlo computer simulation of sedimentation of charged hard spherocylinders

In this article we present a NVT Monte Carlo computer simulation study of sedimentation of an electroneutral mixture of oppositely charged hard spherocylinders (CHSC) with aspect ratio L/sigma = 5, where L and sigma are the length and diameter of the cylinder and hemispherical caps, respectively, for each particle. This system is an extension of the restricted primitive model for spherical particles, where L/sigma = 0, and it is assumed that the ions are immersed in an structureless solvent, i.e., a continuum with dielectric constant D. The system consisted of N = 2000 particles and the Wolf method was implemented to handle the coulombic interactions of the inhomogeneous system. Results are presented for different values of the strength ratio between the gravitational and electrostatic interactions, Gamma = (mg sigma)/(e(2)/D sigma), where m is the mass per particle, e is the electron's charge and g is the gravitational acceleration value. A semi-infinite simulation cell was used with dimensions L-x approximate to L-y and L-z = 5L(x), where L-x, L-y, and L-z are the box dimensions in Cartesian coordinates, and the gravitational force acts along the z-direction. Sedimentation effects were studied by looking at every layer formed by the CHSC along the gravitational field. By increasing Gamma, particles tend to get more packed at each layer and to arrange in local domains with an orientational ordering along two perpendicular axis, a feature not observed in the uncharged system with the same hard-body geometry. This type of arrangement, known as tetratic phase, has been observed in two-dimensional systems of hard-rectangles and rounded hard-squares. In this way, the coupling of gravitational and electric interactions in the CHSC system induces the arrangement of particles in layers, with the formation of quasi-two dimensional tetratic phases near the surface. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.