Surface tension and vapor-liquid phase coexistence of the square-well fluid

The interfacial tension of the square-well model as calculated with several techniques, and for several values of the attractive range of the potential was compared. It was found that MC-volume change was not a good method for this system. As such, the grand-canonical transition-matrix Monte Carlo (GC-TMMC) and molecular dynamics (MD) were found to be in good mutual agreement. Based on the experience and studies currently underway, the molecular dynamic (MD) method was considered to be better for the surface tension calculation of the SW system when applied at low temperatures (T<0.7T_c), and that the GC-TMMC method with finite-size scaling was better at higher temperatures.