Kinetics of liquid-liquid phase separation of a binary mixture in cylindrical pores

We have performed molecular dynamics simulations of the liquid-liquid phase separation of a binary mixture confined in two different sizes of cylindrical pore. In these systems, the interactions between the two fluids and the pore wall are identical so that no wetting occurs and the fluid separates into a series of pluglike domains after a temperature quench. In the larger pore the fluid separation is characterized by bulklike growth exponents until the average domain size is comparable with the pore diameter, after which the growth slows dramatically. In the smaller pore domain sizes reach the pore diameter very quickly, after which the growth proceeds faster than in the large pore system.