How Dimensionality Affects the Structural Anomaly in a Core-Softened Collo

Abstract

The interaction between hard-core soft-shell colloids are characterized by having two characteristic distances: one associated with the penetrable, soft corona and another one corresponding to the impenetrable core. Isotropic core-softened potentials with two characteristic length scales have long been applied to understand the properties of such colloids. Those potentials usually show waterlike anomalies, and recent findings have indicated the existence of multiple anomalous regions in the 2D limit under compression, while in 3D only one anomalous region is observed. In this direction, we perform Molecular Dynamics simulations to unveil the details about the structural behavior in the quasi-2D limit of a core-softened colloid. The fluid was confined between highly repulsive solvophobic walls, and the behavior at distinct wall separation and colloid density was analyzed. Our results indicated a straight relation between the 2D or 3D-like behavior and the layers separation. We can relate that if the system behaves as independent 2D-layers, it will have a 2D-like behavior. However, for some separations the layers are connected, with colloids hopping from one layer to another – having then a 3D-like structural behavior. Those findings fill the gap in the depiction of the anomalous behavior from 2D to 3D.