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arXiv · 1203.2857

Tension and stiffness of the hard sphere crystal-fluid interface

Andreas Härtel·Martin Oettel·Roberto E. Rozas·Stefan U. Egelhaaf·Jürgen Horbach·Hartmut Löwen
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Abstract

A combination of fundamental measure density functional theory and Monte Carlo computer simulation is used to determine the orientation-resolved interfacial tension and stiffness for the equilibrium hard-sphere crystal-fluid interface. Microscopic density functional theory is in quantitative agreement with simulations and predicts a tension of 0.66 kT/\sigma^2 with a small anisotropy of about 0.025 kT and stiffnesses with e.g. 0.53 kT/\sigma^2 for the (001) orientation and 1.03 kT/\sigma^2 for the (111) orientation. Here kT is denoting the thermal energy and \sigma the hard sphere diameter. We compare our results with existing experimental findings.

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Andreas Härtel, Martin Oettel, Roberto E. Rozas, Stefan U. Egelhaaf, Jürgen Horbach, Hartmut Löwen. 2012-03-13. Tension and stiffness of the hard sphere crystal-fluid interface. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.108.226101

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