Structural and thermodynamic behavior of alkane chains at the liquid/vapor interface.

Computer simulations for several alkane fluids were carried out to study thermodynamics and structural behavior of the molecules at the liquid-vapor interface. Three different models were used to simulate the fluids, one of them was proposed in this work and we obtained a slightly better agreement than the other models with experimental data. The fluid structure at the interface was analyzed at temperatures close to the melting point using the new model and it was found that molecules at the free surface present more order than those at the bulk liquid phase. By calculating the order of the hydrocarbon chains a strong structure of molecules was observed at the interface than those in bulk, moreover, some of those molecules at the interface were aligned perpendicular to the interface. Previous simulations report stronger structures at the interface by the formation of a monolayer of alkane chains, however, those simulations started at very low temperatures and they did not reproduce thermodynamic properties such as the interfacial tension correctly. The model proposed in the present work not only presents good agreement with surface tension data but also shows evidence that the fluid structured as experiments indicated at temperatures close to the melting temperature.