The surface tension and Tolman's length of a drop

Abstract

We examine the surface tension and Tolman's length of a spherical drop using the simplified Cahn-Hilliard model which has been used previously by the author to calculate the homogeneous nucleation rate. It is found that the Tolman's length is given by the difference of the bulk correlation lengths of the liquid and vapour phases, and is negative for normal liquids. We discuss briefly the difficulty of estimating the Tolman's length from computer simulations.