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

At low temperature, spheres with a very short-ranged attraction exist as a near-close-packed solid coexisting with an almost 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 tends to zero. The large tensions when the interparticle attractions are short ranged may be why globular proteins only crystallize over a narrow range of conditions.