1 research outputs found
The low temperature interface between the gas and solid phases of hard spheres with a short-ranged attraction
At low temperature, spheres with a very short-ranged attraction exist as a
close-packed solid coexisting with an infinitely dilute gas. We find that the
ratio of the interfacial tension between these two phases to the thermal energy
diverges as the range of the attraction goes to zero. The large tensions when
the interparticle attractions are short-ranged may be why globular proteins
only crystallise over a narrow range of conditions.Comment: 6 pages, no figures (v2 has change of notation to agree with that of
Stell