Kirkwood-Buff Integrals for Finite Volumes

J Phys Chem Lett. 2013 Jan 17;4(2):235-8. doi: 10.1021/jz301992u. Epub 2012 Dec 28.

Abstract

Exact expressions for finite-volume Kirkwood-Buff (KB) integrals are derived for hyperspheres in one, two, and three dimensions. These integrals scale linearly with inverse system size. From this, accurate estimates of KB integrals for infinite systems are obtained, and it is shown that they converge much better than the traditional expressions. We show that this approach is very suitable for the computation of KB integrals from molecular dynamics simulations, as we obtain KB integrals for open systems by simulating closed systems.

Keywords: liquids; mixtures; molecular dynamics simulation; pair correlation functions; small systems; thermodynamic properties.