Phase diagram and structure of colloid-polymer mixtures confined between walls

The influence of confinement, due to flat parallel structureless walls, on phase separation in colloid-polymer mixtures, is investigated by means of grand-canonical Monte Carlo simulations. Ultrathin films, with thicknesses between D=3-10 colloid diameters, are studied. The Asakura-Oosawa model [J. Chem. Phys. 22, 1255 (1954)] is used to describe the particle interactions. To simulate efficiently, a cluster move [J. Chem. Phys. 121, 3253 (2004)] is used in conjunction with successive umbrella sampling [J. Chem. Phys. 120, 10925 (2004)]. These techniques, when combined with finite size scaling, enable an accurate determination of the unmixing binodal. Our results show that the critical behavior of the confined mixture is described by effective critical exponents, which gradually develop from values near those of the two-dimensional Ising model, to those of the three-dimensional Ising model, as D increases. The scaling predictions of and Fisher and Nakanishi [J. Chem. Phys. 75, 5875 (1981)] for the shift of the critical point are compatible with our simulation results. Surprisingly, however, the colloid packing fraction at criticality approaches its bulk (D ->infinity) value nonmonotonically, as D is increased. Far from the critical point, our results are compatible with the simple Kelvin equation, implying a shift of order 1/D in the coexistence colloid chemical potential. We also present density profiles and pair distribution functions for a number of state points on the binodal, and the influence of the colloid-wall interaction is studied.