On the linear hard sphere chain fluids

Abstract

The thermodynamic and structural properties of linear hard sphere chain fluids are studied using geometrical properties of the single chain. This is an extension of the method recently proposed by the authors to study convex particle fluids. The validity of this application to non-convex particles is tested against other theories and the integral equations PY and HNC for which a new simpler solution method is proposed also. The cases of both tangent and fused hard sphere chains are examined. An accurate equation of state is proposed which is valid for both linear tangent hard spheres and fused hard spheres. A semi-analytical expression for the Ornstein–Zernike direct correlation function is proposed which compares well with PY and HNC numerical results. The orientational instabiilty of the isotropic fluid is examined for several cases. In particular the Flory conjecture for linear N -tangent hard sphere fluid which predicts the isotropic-nematic transition around N = 7 is confirmed by the integral equatio...