Attractive energy contribution to nanoconfined fluids behavior: the normal pressure tensor

Abstract

The aim of our research is to demonstrate the role of attractive intermolecular potential energy on normal pressure tensor of confined molecular fluids inside nanoslit pores of two structureless purely repulsive parallel walls in xy plane at z = 0 and z = H, in equilibrium with a bulk homogeneous fluid at the same temperature and at a uniform density. To achieve this we have derived the perturbation theory version of the normal pressure tensor of confined inhomogeneous fluids in nanoslit pores: $$ P_{ZZ} = kT\rho \left( {Z_{1} } \right) + \pi kT\rho \left( {Z_{1} } \right)\int\limits_{ - d}^{0} {\rho \left( {Z_{2} } \right)} Z_{2}^{2} g_{Z,H} (d){\text{d}}Z_{2} - \frac{1}{2}\iint {\int\limits_{0}^{2\pi } {\phi^{\prime } \left( {\vec{r}_{2} } \right)\rho \left( {Z_{1} } \right)\rho \left( {Z_{2} } \right)g_{Z,H} (r_{2} )} }{\frac{{Z_{2}^{2} }}{{(R_{2}^{2} + Z_{2}^{2} )^{{\frac{1}{2}}} }}}R_{2} {\text{d}}R_{2} {\text{d}}Z_{2} {\text{d}}\Uptheta ;\quad \left| {\overset{\lower0.5em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\rightharpoonup}$}} {r}_{2} } \right| > d $$ In which R, Θ, Z are the cylindrical coordinate’s notations and \( \left| {\vec{r}_{2} } \right| = \sqrt {R_{2}^{2} + Z_{2}^{2} }\). Assuming the truncated-Lennard-Jones potential, the third term represents the attractive intermolecular potential energy contribution to the normal pressure tensor. We report solution of this equation for the truncated-Lennard-Jones confined fluid in nanoslit pores, and we demonstrate the role of attractive potential energy by comparing the results of Lennard-Jones and hard-sphere fluids. Our numerical calculations show that the normal pressure tensor has an oscillatory form versus distance from the walls for all confined fluids. The oscillations increase with reduced bulk density and decrease with fluid–fluid attraction. It also becomes broad and smooth with pore width at constant temperature and density. In comparison with hard-sphere confined fluids, the values of the normal pressure for LJ fluids at all distances from the walls are less than the hard-sphere fluids. This analytic pressure tensor equation is a useful tool to understand the role of attractive and repulsive forces in the normal pressure tensor and to predict phase behavior of nanoconfined fluids.