The
fundamental-measure theory (FMT) developed at the end of the
1980s for hard-sphere inhomogeneous fluids has revolutionized density
functional theories (DFTs), allowing one to describe accurately for
the first time highly confined fluids. However, in order to apply
DFTs to real fluids, less rigorous coarse-graining approaches have
always been used for perturbative contributions in addition to the
FMT hard-sphere treatment. With the aim to propose a formally consistent
description avoiding this duality, a possible route is the generalization
of the fundamental-measure theory for potentials different from the
purely hard repulsive term. This is the main purpose of this work,
achieved considering the square-well fluid as initial case test. As
a reference for the bulk fluid, the statistical associating fluid
theory for the square-well monomer has been selected, and a suitable
functional has been developed and validated through comparison against
Monte Carlo molecular simulations. This opens up a new class of efficient
non-local DFTs directly applicable to mixtures of complex fluids.
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