The low temperature interface between the gas and solid phases of hard spheres with a short-ranged attraction

TL;DR

This paper investigates the properties of the interface between gas and solid phases of hard spheres with short-range attraction at low temperatures, revealing diverging interfacial tension ratios and implications for protein crystallization.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical analysis of the low-temperature gas-solid interface for short-range attractive spheres, highlighting diverging interfacial tension ratios as attraction range diminishes.

Findings

Interfacial tension ratio diverges as attraction range approaches zero.

Short-range attractions lead to large interfacial tensions.

Implications for protein crystallization conditions.

Abstract

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.