Intefacial Effects Determine Nonequilibrium Phase Behaviors in Chemically Driven Fluids

By coupling chemical fuel consumption to transitions among the conformational states of biomolecules, biomolecular condensates can be maintained at nonequilibrium steady states and exhibit phase behaviors that are not described by equilibrium thermodynamics.

However, the physical mechanisms that connect dissipation at the level of individual molecules to the mesoscopic phase behavior remain unclear.

Here we show that nonequilibrium fluctuations at the interface between condensed and dilute phases lead to nonequilibrium fluxes at mesoscopic scales.

We demonstrate this relationship by performing molecular-level simulations and developing a first-principles theory that captures these interfacial effects.

Our findings reveal the central role of interfacial properties in governing nonequilibrium phase separation and have broad implications for condensate nucleation, coarsening, and size control in chemically driven fluids.