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Phys. Rev. E 63, 021504 (2001) [6 pages]

Entropy-driven phase separation and configurational correlations on a lattice: Some rigorous results

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P. D. Gujrati
The Department of Physics and The Department of Polymer Science, The University of Akron, Akron, Ohio 44325

Received 8 February 2000; revised 18 September 2000; published 22 January 2001

We prove that if there is a phase separation in a fully packed (FP) athermal system, it must be between pure components only. We then rigorously demonstrate that no phase separation in an athermal FP state of hard particle mixtures on a lattice is possible merely due to size disparity or nonadditivity, if the configurations are weakly correlated, i.e., are quasirandom. We consider a mixture of linear polymers at all packing fractions and argue that no phase separation is possible in an athermal state. The last result also applies to a mixture of flexible particles and hard dimers. Our results contradict many recent numerical results.

© 2001 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.63.021504
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevE.63.021504
PACS:
05.70.Fh, 05.20.Jj, 61.20.Gy, 64.60.-i