Related papers: Modeling of Nucleation Processes
Crystallization and vapor condensation are considered as processes of sequential entering of single atoms/molecules into condensate. The latent heat can be carry away by radiation of characteristic frequencies generated in the course of…
Heterogeneous nucleation on catalytic surfaces plunged into a fluid is described through a stochastic model. To generate this non-equilibrium process we assume that the turn on of a electrostatic potential triggers a complex dynamics that…
The liquid-vapor transition is a classic example of a discontinuous (first-order) phase transition. Such transitions underlie many phenomena in cosmology, nuclear and particle physics, and condensed-matter physics. They give rise to…
We theoretically investigate homogeneous crystal nucleation in a solution containing a solute and a volatile solvent. The solvent evaporates from the solution, thereby continuously increasing the concentration of the solute. We view it as…
In many systems, nucleation of a stable solid may occur in the presence of other (often more than one) metastable phases. These may be polymorphic solids or even liquid phases. In such cases, nucleation of the solid phase from the melt may…
The process of homogeneous crystal nucleation has been considered in a model liquid, where the interparticle interaction is described by a short-range spherical oscillatory potential. Mechanisms of initiating structural ordering in the…
Percolation is a paradigmatic model in disordered systems and has been applied to various natural phenomena. The percolation transition is known as one of the most robust continuous transitions. However, recent extensive studies have…
Classical nucleation theory is used to estimate the free-energy barrier to nucleation of the solid phase of particles interacting via a potential which has a short-ranged attraction. Due to the high interfacial tension between the fluid and…
Heterogeneous nucleation is central to many familiar first-order phase transitions such as the freezing of water and the solidification of metals, and it can also play a crucial role in cosmology. We examine nucleation seeded by preexisting…
Understanding the pathways to crystallization during the deposition of a vapor phase on a cold solid substrate is of great interest in industry, e.g., for the realization of electronic devices made of crystallites-free glassy materials, as…
The most interesting step of condensation is the cluster formation up to the critical size. In a closed system, this is an instationary process, as the vapour is depleted by the emerging liquid phase. This imposes a limitation on direct…
We investigate the early part of the crystal nucleation process in the hard sphere fluid using data produced by computer simulation. We find that hexagonal order manifests continuously in the overcompressed liquid, beginning approximately…
The spontaneous formation and subsequent growth, dissolution, merger and competition of social groups bears similarities to physical phase transitions in metastable finite systems. We examine three different scenarios, percolation, spinodal…
This thesis can be divided into two independent parts. In the first part of this thesis, we focus on studying the kinetic pathways of nucleation in colloidal systems. In Chapter 2, we briefly introduce the relevant theory of nucleation,…
Nucleation in systems with a metastable liquid-gas critical point is the prototypical example of a two-step nucleation process, in which the appearance of the critical nucleus is preceded by the formation of a liquid-like density…
The transition from the quantum to the classical regime of the nucleation of the closed Robertson-Walker Universe with spacially homogeneous matter fields is investigated with a perturbation expansion around the sphaleron configuration. A…
In 1897 Ostwald formulated his step rule for formation of the most stable crystal state for a system with crystal polymorphism. The rule describes the irreversible way a system converts to the crystal with lowest free energy. But in fact…
False vacuum decay in quantum mechanical first order phase transitions is a phenomenon with wide implications in cosmology, and presents interesting theoretical challenges. In the standard approach, it is assumed that false vacuum decay…
We investigate the thermodynamical content of a cellular model which describes nuclear fragmentation as a process taking place in an excited disordered system. The model which reproduces very well the size distribution of fragments does not…
Phase transitions are the macroscopic manifestation of microscopic processes that drive a system towards a new state. The detailed evolution of these processes, particularly in abrupt phase transitions, are currently not fully understood.…