Vapor-liquid critical and interfacial properties of square-well fluids in slit pores

Vapor-liquid phase equilibria of square-well (SW) fluids of variable interaction range: lambda sigma=1.25, 1.75, 2.0, and 3.0 in hard slit pores are studied by means of grand-canonical transition-matrix Monte Carlo (GC-TMMC) simulation. Critical density under confinement shows an oscillatory behavior as slit width, H, reduced from 12 sigma to 1 sigma. Two linear regimes are found for the shift in the critical temperature with the inverse in the slit width. The first regime is seen for H>2.0 sigma with linear increase in the slope of shift in the critical temperature against inverse slit width with increasing interaction range. Subsequent decrease in H has little consequence on the critical temperature and it remains almost constant. Vapor-liquid surface tensions of SW fluids of variable well extent in a planar slit pore of variable slit width are also reported. GC-TMMC results are compared with that from slab based canonical Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics techniques and found to be in good agreement. Although, vapor-liquid surface tension under confinement is found to be lower than the bulk surface tension, the behavior of surface tension as a function of temperature is invariant with the variable pore size. Interfacial width, xi, calculated using a hyperbolic function increases with decreasing slit width at a given temperature, which is contrary to what is being observed recently for cylindrical pores. Inverse scaled interfacial width (xi/H), however, linearly increases with increase in the scaled temperature (T-c,T-bulk-T)/T-c,T-bulk.