Review of the Frenkel–Ladd technique for computing free energies of crystalline solids

ABSTRACT

The Frenkel–Ladd technique, since its development in 1984, is a powerful and popular method for computing free energies of crystalline solid phases. While the original paper by Frenkel and Ladd computed free energy of face-centred cubic solid made up of hard spheres, the technique has been progressively refined and applied to compute free energies of a variety of systems including Lennard–Jones solid, metals, colloidal systems, molecular solids, etc. Recent articles have shown how the computations can be carried out using popular molecular dynamics packages such as LAMMPS and GROMACS. In this article, we review the original and all the subsequent developments of the Frenkel–Ladd technique and present various expressions in a uniform and consistent manner.

KEYWORDS:

• Free energy
• Einstein crystal
• molecular solid

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).