Virial series for inhomogeneous fluids applied to the Lennard-Jones wall-fluid surface tension at planar and curved walls

On the virial expansion of model adsorptive systems

We investigate the thermodynamic properties of various super-critical model adsorptive systems with different fluid-solid attractive strengths using the confined-density virial expansion, with coefficients calculated using the Mayer-sampling Monte Carlo method up to fifth order. We find that the virial expansion converges for adsorptive systems over a density range corresponding approximately to the film-formation regime. Beyond this regime, higher order effects become increasingly important. The virial expansion of the density profile is also investigated. It is determined that this expansion gives insight into the structure associated with adsorption. We also find that weakly attractive systems have a more negative second virial coefficient than strongly attractive systems. This runs counter to the usual interpretation of bulk fluid virial coefficients. This is due to the infinite-dilution limit being very different for adsorbed fluids compared to bulk fluids.

Bending and Gaussian rigidities of confined soft spheres from second-order virial series

We use virial series to study the equilibrium properties of confined soft-spheres fluids interacting through the inverse-power potentials. The confinement is induced by hard walls with planar, spherical, and cylindrical shapes. We evaluate analytically the coefficients of order two in density of the wall-fluid surface tension γ and analyze the curvature contributions to the free energy. Emphasis is in bending and Gaussian rigidities, which are found analytically at order two in density. Their contribution to γ(R) and the accuracy of different truncation procedures to the low curvature expansion are discussed. Finally, several universal relations that apply to low-density fluids are analyzed.