Solid–liquid interfacial energies and equilibrium shapes of nanocrystals

We extract the anisotropy of the solid-liquid interfacial energy of small crystals using phase field crystal simulations. The results indicate a strong dependence of the interfacial energy on the parameters in the phase field crystal model determining the position in the solid-liquid coexistence region in the phase diagram. Furthermore a size dependence of the anisotropy is shown if the crystal shape is reduced to the size of a nucleus.