Authors
Katsuhiko Satoh, Giacomo Saielli
Published in
Physical chemistry chemical physics : PCCP. Oct 12, 2026. Epub Oct 12, 2026.
Abstract
We present molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of binary mixtures of oppositely charged anisotropic Gay-Berne (GB) discotic particles and Lennard-Jones (LJ) spheres, with a GB : LJ stoichiometry of 1 : 2. At low scaled temperatures, the competition between two opposing driving forces, that is on the one hand the tendency of anisotropic particles to phase-separate, driven by excluded-volume and enthalpic effects, and on the other hand the long-range electrostatic repulsion that opposes macroscopic segregation of same-charge particles, gives rise to a mesoscopic charge separation. This is manifested as alternating thick layers of same-charge particles, constituting a novel microphase with a characteristic length scale spanning several particle diameters. The thickness of both the GB and LJ layers increases monotonically with decreasing scaled charge and it is well described by an inverse power law, d* = A + B/q*, where d* is the scaled thickness and q* the scaled charge. This result is consistent with a simple continuum electrostatic model based on stacked slabs of alternating charge density, which predicts a quadratic divergence of the electrostatic energy with layer thickness. Our results are directly relevant to the design of lyotropic liquid crystal phases in colloidal suspensions of anisotropic nanoparticles carrying opposite surface charges, and provide a microscopic understanding of the interplay between shape anisotropy, excluded-volume effects, and electrostatics in driving mesoscale charge separation.
PMID:
42862089
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 12 Oct 2026.
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