Spinodal decomposition in thin films: molecular-dynamics simulations of a binary Lennard-Jones fluid mixture

We use molecular dynamics (MD) to simulate an unstable homogeneous mixture of binary fluids (AB), confined in a slit pore of width D. The pore walls are assumed to be flat and structureless and attract one component of the mixture (A) with the same strength. The pairwise interactions between the particles are modeled by the Lennard-Jones potential, with symmetric parameters that lead to a miscibility gap in the bulk. In the thin-film geometry, an interesting interplay occurs between surface enrichment and phase separation. We study the evolution of a mixture with equal amounts of A and B, which is rendered unstable by a temperature quench. We find that A-rich surface enrichment layers form quickly during the early stages of the evolution, causing a depletion of A in the inner regions of the film. These surface-directed concentration profiles propagate from the walls towards the center of the film, resulting in a transient layered structure. This layered state breaks up into a columnar state, which is characterized by the lateral coarsening of cylindrical domains. The qualitative features of this process resemble results from previous studies of diffusive Ginzburg-Landau-type models [S. K. Das, S. Puri, J. Horbach, and K. Binder, Phys. Rev. E 72, 061603 (2005)], but quantitative aspects differ markedly. The relation to spinodal decomposition in a strictly two-dimensional geometry is also discussed.