Structure of Lennard-Jones fluids confined in square nanoscale channels from density functional theory

The density distribution of Lennard-Jones fluids confined in square nanoscale channels with Lennard-Jones walls has been studied using the nonlocal density functional theory (DFT) based on the Tarazona model. The effect of channel lengths on the density profiles with various chemical potentials was discussed. It was found that there is an apparent layering phenomenon for the confined fluids due to the combining influences of the enhancing solid-fluid interaction and the excluded volume effect. The pronounced density peaks were observed at the corners of square channels due to the strong fluid-solid interactions. The grand canonical ensemble Monte Carlo simulation (GCEMC) was applied to test the nonlocal DFT results. The DFT calculations are in relatively good agreement with the GCEMC simulations. The adsorption isotherms in a series of square channels were evaluated based on the obtained density distributions. The adsorption mechanism within the square pores was investigated. A comparison between the adsorptions of the square pores with those of the corresponding slit-size pores has been given. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.