Calculation of solid-liquid interfacial free energy: A classical nucleation theory based approach

We present a simple approach to calculate the solid-liquid interfacial free energy. This new method is based on the classical nucleation theory. Using the molecular dynamics simulation, we employ spherical crystal nuclei embedded in the supercooled liquids to create an ideal model of a homogeneous nucleation. The interfacial free energy is extracted by fitting the relation between the critical nucleus size and the reciprocal of the critical undercooling temperature. The orientationally averaged interfacial free energy is found to be 0.302 +/- 0.002 (in standard LJ unit). The temperature dependence of the interfacial free energy is also obtained in this work. We find that the interfacial free energy increases slightly with increasing temperature. The positive temperature coefficient of the interfacial free energy is in qualitative agreement with Spaepen's analysis [Solid State Phys. 47, FS181 (1994)] and Turnbull's empirical estimation [J. Appl. Phys. 21, 1022 (1950)]. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.