Related papers: Gas-liquid Nucleation at Large Metastability
A common approach to study nucleation rates is the estimation of free-energy barriers. This usually requires knowledge about the shape of the forming droplet, a task that becomes notoriously difficult in macromolecular setups starting with…
The foundation for any discussion of first-order phse transitions is Classical Nucleation Theory(CNT). CNT, developed in the first half of the twentieth century, is based on a number of heuristically plausible assumtptions and the majority…
Nucleation is the onset of a first-order phase transition by which a metastable phase transforms into a more stable one. Such a phase transition occurs when an initial system initially in equilibrium is destabilized by the change of an…
Crystallization from a supercooled liquid initially proceeds via the formation of a small solid embryo (nucleus), which requires surmounting an activation barrier. This phenomenon is most easily studied by numerical simulation, using…
Systems with long-range interactions when quenced into a metastable state near the pseudo-spinodal exhibit nucleation processes that are quite different from the classical nucleation seen near the coexistence curve. In systems with…
This study presents a holistic picture of the preformation of nuclear clusters with credence to the kinematics of their emissions. Besides the fitting of the preformation formula to reproduce the experimental half-lives, we have…
Despite its relevance in biology and engineering, the molecular mechanism driving cavitation in water remains unknown. Using computer simulations, we investigate the structure and dynamics of vapor bubbles emerging from metastable water at…
We test classical nucleation theory (CNT) in the case of simulations of deeply supercooled, high density liquid silica, as modelled by the BKS potential. We find that at density $\rho=4.38$~g/cm$^3$, spontaneous nucleation of crystalline…
Prediction of nucleation rates in first order phase transitions requires the knowledge of the barrier associated to the free energy profile $W$. Molecular simulations offer a direct route through $W = -kT \ln p_a$, where $k$ is Boltzmann's…
Nucleation, the birth of a stable cluster from disorder, is inherently stochastic. Yet up to date, there are no quantitative studies on NaCl nucleation that accounts for its stochastic nature. Here, we report the first stochastic treatment…
The microscopic mechanisms involved in the formation/dissociation of methane hydrate confined at the nanometer scale are unraveled using advanced molecular modeling techniques combined with a mesoscale thermodynamic approach. By means of…
We propose a theoretical approach to quantitatively account for the role of entanglement in the nucleation of polymer melts, which is the unique feature of polymer differentiated from small molecules. By performing molecular dynamics…
In standard nucleation theory, the nucleation process is characterized by computing $\Delta\Omega(V)$, the reversible work required to form a cluster of volume $V$ of the stable phase inside the metastable mother phase. However, other…
Modulating liquid-to-solid transitions and the resulting crystalline structure for tailored properties is much desired. Colloidal systems are exemplary to this end, but the fundamental knowledge gaps in relating the influence of…
An essential parameter of the Classical Nucleation Theory (CNT) is the surface energy between a critical-size nucleus and the ambient phase, $\sigma$. In condensed matter, this parameter cannot be experimentally determined independently of…
Recently, it was shown that a theoretical description of nucleation based on fluctuating hydrodynamics and classical density functional theory can be used to determine non-classical nucleation pathways for crystallization (Lutsko, Sci. Adv.…
The nucleation of a droplet of stable cylinder phase from a metastable lamellar phase is examined within the single-mode approximation to the Brazovskii model for diblock copolymer melts. By employing a variational ansatz for the droplet…
The evaluation of nucleation rates from molecular dynamics trajectories is hampered by the slow nucleation time scale and impact of finite size effects. Here, we show that accurate nucleation rates can be obtained in a very general fashion…
Heterogeneous nucleation is a process wherein extrinsic impurities facilitate freezing by lowering nucleation barriers and constitutes the dominant mechanism for crystallization in most systems. Classical nucleation theory (\textsc{Cnt})…
Nucleation on top of two-dimensional islands with step edge barriers is investigated using scaling arguments. The nucleation rate is expressed in terms of three basic time scales: The time interval between deposition events, the residence…