Van der Waals contribution to the binding energy of noble metals

The Van der Waals contribution to the binding energy of the noble metals for both FCC and HCP structures is calculated. It is shown that the Van der Waals forces will give noble metals a more stable FCC structure than HCP, the energy difference being about 0.02 eV atom -1 . A comparison of binding energy is made with recent calculations by Rehr, Zaremba and Kohn (1975). There is general agreement between the many-body estimate in the present paper and their pairwise interaction model results.