Surface-directed spinodal decomposition of fluids confined in a cylindrical pore

The surface-directed spinodal decomposition of a binary liquid confined inside a cylindrical pore is investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. One component of the liquid wets the pore surface while the other remains neutral. A variety of wetting conditions are studied. For the partial wetting case, after an initial period of phase separation, the domains organize themselves into pluglike structures and the system enters into a metastable state. Therefore, a complete phase separation is never achieved. Analysis of domain growth and the structure factor suggests a one-dimensional growth dynamics for the partial wetting case. As the wetting interaction is increased beyond a critical value, a transition from the pluglike to tubelike domain formation is observed, which corresponds to the full wetting morphology. Thus, a complete phase separation is achieved as the wetting species moves towards the pore surface and forms layers enclosing the nonwetting species residing around the axis of the cylinder. The coarsening dynamics of both the species are studied separately. The wetting species is found to follow a two-dimensional domain growth dynamics with a growth exponent 1/2 in the viscous hydrodynamic regime. This was substantiated by the Porod tail of the structure factor. On the other hand, the domain grows linearly with time for the nonwetting species. This suggests that the nonwetting species behaves akin to a three-dimensional bulk system. An appropriate reasoning is presented to justify the given observations.