Enhanced attraction between particles in a bidisperse mixture with random pair-wise interactions

Abstract

Motivated by growing interests in multicomponent metallic alloys and complex fluids, we study a complex mixture with bidispersity in size and polydispersity in energy. The energy polydispersity in the system is introduced by considering random pair-wise interactions between the particles. Extensive molecular dynamics simulations are performed to compute potential energy and neighborhood identity ordering (NIO) parameter as a function of temperature for a wide range of parameters including size-ratio and concentration of the two species by quenching it from a high temperature fluid state to a crystalline state. Our findings demonstrate an enhancement of the neighborhood identity ordering on addition of particles of different sizes. Moreover, a comparatively higher increase in NIO parameter is achieved by tuning the size-ratio of the particles. We also propose NIO parameter to be a good marker to differentiate systems (below the liquid-to-solid transition temperature) having different values of size-ratio and concentrations. Effect of cooling rates on NIO parameter is also discussed.