English

Impurity mediated nucleation in hexadecane-in-water emulsions

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-10-31 v1 Materials Science

Abstract

We report detailed nucleation studies on the liquid-to-solid transition of hexadecane using nearly monodisperse hexadecane-in-water emulsions. A careful consideration of the kinetics of isothermal and nonisothermal freezing show deviations from predictions of classical nucleation theory, if one assumes that the emulsion droplet population is homogeneous. Similar deviations have been observed previously. As an explanation, we propose a novel argument based on the dynamic generation of droplet heterogeneity mediated by mobile impurities. This proposal is in excellent agreement with existing data.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9811091,
  title  = {Impurity mediated nucleation in hexadecane-in-water emulsions},
  author = {Amy Herhold and Deniz Ertas and Alex J. Levine and H. E. King},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9811091},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

RevTeX 3.0, 11 pages with 7 embedded eps figures, \documentstyle[aps,twocolumn,floats,epsf]{revtex}. Submitted to Phys. Rev. E