The influence of the liquid slab thickness on the planar vapor–liquid interfacial tension

One of the long standing challenges in molecular simulation is the description of interfaces. On the molecular length scale, finite size effects significantly influence the properties of the interface such as its interfacial tension, which can be reliably investigated by molecular dynamics simulation of planar vapor-liquid interfaces. For the Lennard-Jones fluid, finite size effects are examined here by varying the thickness of the liquid slab. It is found that the surface tension and density in the center of the liquid region decreases significantly for thin slabs. The influence of the slab thickness on both the liquid density and the surface tension is found to scale with 1/S^3; in terms of the slab thickness S, and a linear correlation between both effects is obtained. The results corroborate the analysis of A. Malijevsky, G. Jackson, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 24 (2012) 464121, who recently detected an analogous effect for the surface tension of liquid nanodroplets.