The solid-liquid interfacial tension of diamond-structure Si and Ge

The authors extend their previously developed Ginzburg-Landau theory for the solid-liquid interfaces of BCC elements to treat the diamond-structure elements Si and Ge. They use as an order parameter the amplitude of the (220) components of the density of solid. This order parameter is inserted into a simplified density-functional theory for the freezing of Si and Ge, and used to estimate explicitly the crystal-melt interfacial tensions.