Mixing effects for the structural relaxation in binary hard-sphere liquids

Phys Rev Lett. 2003 Aug 22;91(8):085701. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.085701. Epub 2003 Aug 20.

Abstract

We report extensive molecular-dynamics-simulation results for binary mixtures of hard spheres for different size disparities and different mixing percentages, for packing fractions up to 0.605, and over a characteristic time interval spanning up to 5 orders in magnitude. We explore the changes in the evolution of glassy dynamics due to mixing and discover two opposite scenarios: For large size disparity, increasing the mixing percentage of small particles leads to a speed up of long-time dynamics, while small disparity leads to a slowing down. These results agree with predictions based on the mode-coupling theory for ideal-glass transitions.