52 research outputs found
Solid-amorphous transition is related to the waterlike anomalies in a fluid without liquid-liquid phase transition
The most accepted origin for the water anomalous behavior is the phase
transition between two liquids (LLPT) in the supercooled regime connected to
the glassy first order phase transition at lower temperatures. Two length
scales potentials are an effective approach that have long being employed to
understand the properties of fluids with waterlike anomalies and, more
recently, the behavior of colloids and nanoparticles. These potentials can be
parameterized to have distinct shapes, as a pure repulsive ramp, such as the
model proposed by de Oliveira et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 124, 64901 (2006)]. This
model has waterlike anomalies despite the absence of LLPT. To unravel how the
waterlike anomalies are connected to the solid phases we employ Molecular
Dynamics simulations. We have analyzed the fluid-solid transition under
cooling, with two solid crystalline phases, BCC and HCP, and two amorphous
regions being observed. We show how the competition between the scales creates
an amorphous cluster in the BCC crystal that leads to the amorphization at low
temperatures. A similar mechanism is found in the fluid phase, with the system
changing from a BCC-like to an amorphous-like structure in the point where a
maxima in is observed. With this, we can relate the competition between
two fluid structures with the amorphous clusterization in the BCC phase.Those
findings help to understand the origins of waterlike behavior in systems
without liquid-liquid critical point
Ion fluxes through nano-pores and transmembrane channels
We introduce an implicit solvent Molecular Dynamics approach for calculating
ionic fluxes through narrow nano-pores and transmembrane channels. The method
relies on a dual-control- volume grand-canonical molecular dynamics (DCV-GCMD)
simulation and the analytical solution for the electrostatic potential inside a
cylindrical nano-pore recently obtained by Levin [Europhys. Lett., 76, 163
(2006)]. The theory is used to calculate the ionic fluxes through an artificial
trans-membrane c hannel which mimics the antibacterial gramicidin A channel.
Both current-voltage and current-concentration relations are calculated under
various experimental conditions. We show that our results are comparable to the
characteristics associated to the gramicidin A pore, specially the existence of
two binding sites inside the pore and the observed saturation in the
current-concentration profiles.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review
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