Applying molecular theory to steady-state diffusing systems

Predicting the properties of nonequilibrium systems from molecular simulations is a growing area of interest. One important class of problems involves steady-state diffusion. To study these cases, a grand canonical molecular dynamics approach has been developed by Heffelfinger and van Swol [J. Chem. Phys. 101, 5274 (1994)]. With this method, the flux of particles, the chemical potential gradients, and density gradients can all be measured in the simulation. In this paper, we present a complementary approach that couples a nonlocal density functional theory (DFT) with a transport equation describing steady-state flux of the particles. We compare transport-DFT predictions to GCMD results for a variety of ideal (color diffusion), and nonideal (uphill diffusion and convective transport) systems. In all cases, excellent agreement between transport-DFT and GCMD calculations is obtained with diffusion coefficients that are invariant with respect to density and external fields.