The influence of thermodynamic self-consistency on the phase behaviour of symmetric binary mixtures

Abstract

We have investigated the phase behaviour of a symmetric binary mixture with particles interacting via hard-core Yukawa potentials. To calculate the thermodynamic properties we have used the mean spherical approximation (MSA), a conventional liquid state theory, and the closely related self-consistent Ornstein–Zernike approximation which is defined via an MSA-type closure relation, requiring, in addition, thermodynamic self-consistency between the compressibility and the energy-route. We investigate on a quantitative level the effect of the self-consistency requirement on the phase diagram and on the critical behaviour and confirm the existence of three archetypes of phase diagram, which originate from the competition between the first order liquid/vapour transition and the second order demixing transition.