Density functional theory formulation for fluid adsorption on correlated random surfaces

Mechanism of overscreening breakdown by molecular-scale electrode surface morphology in asymmetric ionic liquids

The interfacial nature of the electric double layer (EDL) assumes that electrode surface morphology significantly impacts the EDL properties. Since molecular-scale roughness modifies the structure of EDL, it is expected to disturb the overscreening effect and alter differential capacitance (DC). In this paper, we present a model that describes EDL near atomically rough electrodes with account for short-range electrostatic correlations. We provide numerical and analytical solutions for the analysis of conditions for the overscreening breakdown and DC shift estimation. Our findings reveal that electrode surface structure leads to DC decrease and can both break or enhance overscreening depending on the relation of surface roughness to electrostatic correlation length and ion size asymmetry.

Electrolyte structure near electrodes with molecular-size roughness

Understanding electrodes' surface morphology influence on ions' distribution is essential for designing supercapacitors with enhanced energy density characteristics. We develop a model for the structure of electrolytes near the rough surface of electrodes. The model describes an effective electrostatic field's increase and associated intensification of ions' spatial separation at the electrode-electrolyte interface. These adsorption-induced local electric and structure properties result in notably increased values and a sharpened form of the differential capacitance dependence on the applied potential. Such capacitance behavior is observed in many published simulations, and its description is beyond the capabilities of the established flat-electrodes theories. The proposed approach could extend the quantitatively verified models providing a new instrument of the electrode surface-parameter optimization for specific electrolytes.

Free-Energy-Averaged Potentials for Adsorption in Heterogeneous Slit Pores Using PC-SAFT Classical Density Functional Theory

This study analyzes the adsorption behavior in two-dimensional heterogeneous slit pores using nonlocal density functional theory based on the perturbed-chain statistical associating fluid theory (PC-SAFT) equation of state. Both chemical heterogeneity and surface roughness on small atomistic scales are investigated. The solid structure is considered as individual solid interaction sites whereby chemical heterogeneity is introduced through the presence of different solid-fluid sites and molecular roughness by varying the position of the interaction sites in the first solid layers. The effect of both forms of heterogeneity on the adsorption behavior is assessed individually. Effective one-dimensional solid-fluid potentials provide a way to reduce the dimensionality and computational demand of the density functional theory (DFT) calculations. We determine one-dimensional free-energy-averaged (FEA) solid-fluid potentials of methane and n-butane in the low-density limit for solid systems with molecular roughness and chemical heterogeneity. Using this effective one-dimensional solid-fluid potential at any density, we find excellent agreement of adsorption isotherms for both solid descriptions in systems with homogeneous slit pores. Subcritical adsorption isotherms of n-butane in slit pores with surface roughness show deviations at higher pressures due to the formation of fluid layers in the one-dimensional FEA potential. Chemical heterogeneity introduces a shift of the capillary condensation pressure below the saturation pressure of the bulk liquid, which is well described by the free-energy-averaged system.

Branching random graph model of rough surfaces describes thermal properties of the effective molecular potential

Fluid properties near rough surfaces are crucial in describing fundamental surface phenomena and modern industrial material design implementations. One of the most powerful approaches to model real rough materials is based on the surface representation in terms of random geometry. Understanding the influence of random solid geometry on the low-temperature fluid thermodynamics is a cutting-edge problem. Therefore, this work extends recent studies bypassing high-temperature expansion and small heterogeneity scale. We introduce random branching trees whose topology reflects the hierarchical properties of a random solid geometry. This mathematical representation allows us to obtain averaged free energy using a statistical model of virtual clusters interacting through random ultrametric pairwise potentials. Our results demonstrate that a significant impact to fluid-solid interface energy is induced by the hierarchical structure of random geometry at low temperature. These calculations coincide with direct Monte Carlo simulations. Due to the study's interdisciplinary nature, the developed approach can be applied to a wide range of quenched disorder systems on random graphs.

An investigation of free-energy-averaged (coarse-grained) potentials for fluid adsorption on heterogeneous solid surfaces

Coarse-grained, two-body fluid-solid potentials provide a simple way to describe the interaction between a fluid molecule and a solid in adsorption theories, and also a means to reduce the computational expense in molecular simulations, compared to those employing full atomistic detail. Here we investigate the applicability of a recently proposed mapping procedure to obtain free-energy-averaged (FEA) fluid-solid interactions for fluids on various heterogeneous surfaces. Methane and graphite are chosen as the fluid and the solid, respectively, and the surface graphene layer is modified to create chemical and geometrical heterogeneities; for the latter surfaces, the FEA mapping is appropriately modified to account for vacancies. Adsorption isotherms and fluid density profiles are obtained by performing grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations for explicit-solid and FEA-potential representations, and are compared to gain insights about the applicability and limitations of the FEA potentials. For solids with homogeneous and chemically heterogeneous surfaces, adsorption isotherms and density profiles obtained using FEA potentials are in good agreement with those obtained using an explicit-solid representation. For surfaces containing vacancies, isotherms and density profiles obtained using the unmodified FEA potential differ significantly from their explicit-surface analogues. When using the FEA potential obtained with the modified mapping procedure some deviations are still seen at very high pressure, however, at low to moderate pressures, agreement is, once again, good.

Bottom-Up Approach to the Coarse-Grained Surface Model: Effective Solid-Fluid Potentials for Adsorption on Heterogeneous Surfaces

Coarse-grained surface models with a low-dimension positional dependence have great advantages in simplifying the theoretical adsorption model and speeding up molecular simulations. In this work, we present a bottom-up strategy, developing a new two-dimensional (2D) coarse-grained surface model from the "bottom-level" atomistic model, for adsorption on highly heterogeneous surfaces with various types of defects. The corresponding effective solid-fluid potential consists of a 2D hard wall potential representing the structure of the surface and a one-dimensional (1D) effective area-weighted free-energy-averaged (AW-FEA) potential representing the energetic strength of the substrate-adsorbate interaction. Within the conventional free-energy-averaged (FEA) framework, an accessible-area-related parameter is introduced into the equation of the 1D effective solid-fluid potential, which allows us not only to obtain the energy information from the fully atomistic system but also to get the structural dependence of the potential on any geometric defect on the surface. Grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations are carried out for argon adsorption at 87.3 K to test the validity of the new 2D surface model against the fully atomistic system. We test four graphitic substrates with different levels of geometric roughness for the top layer, including the widely used reference solid substrate Cabot BP-280. The simulation results show that adding one more dimension to the traditional 1D surface model is essential for adsorption on the geometrically heterogeneous surfaces. In particular, the 2D surface model with the AW-FEA solid-fluid potential significantly improves the adsorption isotherm and density profile over the 1D surface model with the FEA solid-fluid potential over a wide range of pressure. The method to construct an effective solid-fluid potential for an energetically heterogeneous surface is also discussed.

Modeling of the phase transition inside graphene nanobubbles filled with ethane

A liquid–gas phase transition of ethane inside graphene nanobubbles below the critical temperature leads to a ‘forbidden range’ of radii, in which no stable bubbles exist.