Calculation of the surface tension of liquid metals using a one-component-plasma reference system

The one-component-plasma (OCP) model is used as a reference system instead of the traditional hard-sphere fluid to calculate the liquid-vapor interfacial surface tension of liquid metals within the density functional formalism. The calculated surface tensions of the alkali metals are in excellent agreement with experiment. For the polyvalent metal Al, the result obtained is larger than experimental measurements. It is concluded that the OCP system is not suitable to describe the liquid-vapor phase transition in simple metals which have a nominal plasma parameter larger than the usual freezing value of about 178. The calculated interfacial widths in all cases are narrower than the expected experimental values.