Computer simulations and thermodynamics of anisotropic nanoparticles at fluid interfaces

Abstract

We investigate the applicability of thermodynamic models to investigate the physical behavior of nanoscale objects at liquid-liquid interfaces. The applicability of such models to these small scales is not obvious, since they ignore the molecular nature of the solvent, as well as the finite width and fluctuations of the interface. We focus our study on anisotropic nanoparticles that can interact with an external field through an embedded dipole moment. Using Monte Carlo simulations we show that thermodynamic models defined in terms of a few material properties very accurately describe the behavior of nanoparticles in a wide range of conditions; field strength, nanoparticle-fluid interactions and nanoparticle size and anisotropy. Our results show that thermodynamics offers a powerful approach to investigate the physical behavior of nanoscale objects.