Inverse percolation by removing straight rigid rods from square lattices in the presence of impurities

Abstract

Numerical simulations and finite-size scaling analysis have been carried out to study the problem of inverse percolation by removing straight rigid rods from square lattices contaminated with non-conducting impurities. The presence of impurities provides a more realistic approach to the deposited monolayer, which usually presents inhomogeneities due to the irregular arrangement of surface and bulk atoms, the presence of various chemical species, etc. The process starts with an initial configuration, where all lattice sites are occupied by an impurity (with a concentration ρ) or a conducting particle (with a concentration 1 − ρ). Then, the system is diluted by randomly removing linear k-mers (linear clusters of k consecutive conducting particles) from the lattice. The impurities remain fixed in its position and cannot be removed. The central idea of this paper is based on finding the maximum concentration of conducting sites (minimum concentration of empty sites) for which the connectivity disappears. This particular value of the concentration is called inverse percolation threshold, and determines a well-defined geometrical phase transition in the system. On the other hand, the inverse jamming coverage is the coverage of the limit state, in which no more objects can be removed from the lattice due to the absence of linear clusters of nearest-neighbour sites of appropriate size. The dependence of percolation and jamming thresholds on the concentration of defects was investigated for dierent values of k, ranging from 1 to 120. The obtained results show that the behaviour of the system is significantly aected by the presence of impurities. In addition, the nature of the jamming and percolation transitions was studied. In the first case, the corresponding spatial correlation length critical exponent νj was measured, being νj ≈ 1. This value coincides with previous calculations of this exponent for the standard random sequential adsorption of linear k-mers on square lattices. Critical exponents were also calculated for the percolation phase transition, showing that the universality class corresponding to ordinary percolation is preserved regardless the values of k and ρ considered.