  The Asakura-Oosawa model for colloid-polymer mixtures is studied by Monte
Carlo simulations at densities inside the two-phase coexistence region of fluid
and solid. Choosing a geometry where the system is confined between two flat
walls, and a wall-colloid potential that leads to incomplete wetting of the
crystal at the wall, conditions can be created where a single nanoscopic
wall-attached crystalline cluster coexists with fluid in the remainder of the
simulation box. Following related ideas that have been useful to study
heterogeneous nucleation of liquid droplets at the vapor-liquid coexistence, we
estimate the contact angles from observations of the crystalline clusters in
thermal equilibrium. We find fair agreement with a prediction based on Young's
equation, using estimates of interface and wall tension from the study of flat
surfaces. It is shown that the pressure versus density curve of the finite
system exhibits a loop, but the pressure maximum signifies the "droplet
evaporation-condensation" transition and thus has nothing in common with a van
der Waals-like loop. Preparing systems where the packing fraction is deep
inside the two-phase coexistence region, the system spontaneously forms a "slab
state", with two wall-attached crystalline domains separated by (flat)
interfaces from liquid in full equilibrium with the crystal in between;
analysis of such states allows a precise estimation of the bulk equilibrium
properties at phase coexistence.
