Elusiveness of Fluid-Fluid Demixing in Additive Hard-Core Mixtures

The conjecture that when an additive hard-core mixture phase separates when one of the phases is spatially ordered, well supported by considerable evidence, is in contradiction with some simulations of a binary mixture of hard cubes on cubic lattices. By extending Rosenfeld’s fundamental measure theory to lattice models we show that the phase behavior of this mixture is far more complex than simulations show, exhibiting regions of stability of several smectic, columnar, and solid phases, but no fluid-fluid demixing. A comparison with the simulations show that they are, in fact, compatible with a fluid-columnar demixing transition, thus bringing this model into the same demixing scheme as the rest of additive hard-core mixtures.