Related papers: A Limit of Stability in Supercooled Liquid Cluster…
We use molecular simulation to calculate the nucleation free energy barrier for the freezing of a 456 atom gold cluster over a range of temperatures. The results show that the embryo of the solid cluster grows at the vapor-surface interface…
Understanding the mechanism of nucleation of the stable phase inside the metastable parent phase during a first order phase transition has been a subject of outstanding interest in natural science. The problem becomes even more challenging…
A supercooled liquid is said to have a kinetic spinodal if a temperature Tsp exists below which the liquid relaxation time exceeds the crystal nucleation time. We revisit classical nucleation theory taking into account the viscoelastic…
We numerically study a nondisordered lattice spin system with a first order liquid-crystal transition, as a model for supercooled liquids and glasses. Below the melting temperature the system can be kept in the metastable liquid phase, and…
We investigate the thermodynamical stability of low-density isospin-symmetric nuclear matter at finite temperature, explicitly including light clusters as degrees of freedom. Within a generalized mean-field framework, we compute the…
We simulate the homogeneous nucleation of ice from supercooled liquid water at 220 K in the isobaric-isothermal ensemble using the MW monatomic water potential. Monte Carlo simulations using umbrella sampling are performed in order to…
The freezing of metal nanoclusters such as gold, silver, and copper exhibits a novel structural evolution. The formation of the icosahedral (Ih) structure is dominant despite its energetic metastability. This important phenomenon, hitherto…
We develop a series of molecular dynamics computer simulations of liquid water, performed with a polarizable potential model, to calculate the spinodal line and the curve of maximum density inside the metastable supercooled region. After…
Nucleation is considered near the pseudospinodal in a one-dimensional $\phi^4$ model with a non-conserved order parameter and long-range interactions. For a sufficiently large system or a system with slow relaxation to metastable…
With numerical simulations of the mW model of water, we investigate the energetic stability of crystalline clusters for both Ice I (cubic and hexagonal ice) and for the metastable Ice 0 phase as a function of the cluster size. Under a large…
A mesoscopic model is proposed to explain the anomalous dynamics in a supercooled liquid as its glass transition temperature is approached from above. The model is based on the assumption of $\beta$ organized $\alpha$ process, with the…
In this work, we use large-scale molecular dynamics simulations coupled to free energy calculations to identify for the first time a limit of stability (spinodal) and a change in the nucleation mechanism in aqueous NaCl solutions. This is a…
A few experiments have already detected the presence of icosahedral superclusters in undercooled liquids, confirming a possible homogeneous nucleation of such entities as suggested by Franck. These superclusters survive in melts above the…
We carry out molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations to characterize nucleation in liquid clusters of 600 Lennard-Jones particles over a broad range of temperatures. We use the formalism of mean first-passage times to…
We study the nucleation of crystalline cluster phases in the generalized exponential model with exponent n=4. Due to the finite value of this pair potential for zero separation, at high densities the system forms cluster crystals with…
Stability of cylindrical and spherical crystals growing from a supersaturated solution (in Mullins-Sekerka's approximation) is considered using the maximum entropy production principle. The concept of the binodal of the nonequilibrium…
We present Monte Carlo simulations on a lattice system that displays a first order phase transition between a disordered phase (liquid) and an ordered phase (crystal). The model is augmented by an interaction that simulates the effect of…
The ST2 interaction potential has been used in a large number of simulation studies to explore the possibility of a liquid-liquid phase transition (LLPT) in supercooled water. Using umbrella sampling Monte Carlo simulations of ST2 water, we…
We study the spontaneous nucleation and growth of sodium chloride crystals induced by controlled evaporation in confined geometries (microcapillaries) spanning several orders of magnitude in volume. In all experiments, the nucleation…
We report a numerical study of the rate of crystal nucleation in a binary suspension of oppositely charged colloids. Two different crystal structures compete in the thermodynamic conditions under study. We find that the crystal phase that…