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Binary Mixtures Near Surfaces, Patrick Dunn

Dissertations and Theses

This paper presents an approach to modeling a binary mixture near a surf ace. The approach used is based on statistical mechanics. The Cluster Variation (CV) method is used to solve an Ising-like model with a cluster size of two (neighboring lattice points). The free energy of the system is expressed in terms of the probabilities of occurrences of particular clusters. The CV method is first developed for a homogeneous system which leads to a set of three non-linear partial differential equations. The surface boundary is then introduced and the CV method is developed for this system which leads to …