Related papers: Non-isomorphic nucleation pathways arising from mo…

The phase separation mechanism of a binary liquid mixture off-critically quenched in its miscibility gap is nucleation and growth, its homogeneous phase reaching a metastable equilibrium state. The successive stages of growth of the…

Using state-of-the-art rare-event sampling simulations, we precisely characterize the nucleation of liquid droplets from a supersaturated Lennard-Jones gas and uncover a key physical feature: critical clusters nucleate with a density that…

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…

Experimental investigations of hydrophobic/water interfaces often return controversial results, possibly due to the unknown role of gas accumulation at the interfaces. Here, during advanced atomic force microscopy of the initial evolution…

The solid diffusive phase transformation involving the nucleation and growth of one nucleus is universal and frequently employed but has not yet been fully understood at the atomic level. Here, our first-principles calculations reveal a…

Homogeneous nucleation of a new phase near a second, continuous, transition, is considered. The continuous transition is in the metastable region associated with the first-order phase transition, one of whose coexisting phases is…

For isotropic fluids, classical nucleation theory predicts the nucleation rate, barrier height and critical droplet size by accounting for the competition between bulk energy and interfacial tension. The nucleation process in liquid…

Electrogenerated gas nanobubbles strongly influence the performance of electrochemical energy-conversion systems, yet their nucleation and early evolution remain poorly understood due to limitations of existing experimental and…

The transition from a nematic to an isotropic state in a self-closing spherical liquid crystal shell with tangential alignment is a stimulating phenomenon to investigate, as the topology dictates that the shell exhibits local isotropic…

Pressure reduction in liquids may result in vaporization and bubble formation. This thermodynamic process is termed cavitation. It is commonly observed in hydraulic machinery, ship propellers, and even in medical therapy within the human…

Spherical-cap-shaped interfacial nanobubbles (NBs) forming on hydrophobic surfaces in aqueous solutions have extensively been studied both from a fundamental point of view and due to their relevance for various practical applications. In…

We present an atomistic study of heterogeneous nucleation in Ni employing transition path sampling, which reveals a template precursor-mediated mechanism of crystallization. Most notably, we find that the ability of tiny templates to modify…

Unlike fluids at thermal equilibrium, biomolecular mixtures in living systems can sustain nonequilibrium steady states, in which active processes modify the conformational states of the constituent molecules. Despite qualitative…

Topological edge modes are excitations that are localized at the materials' edges and yet are characterized by a topological invariant defined in the bulk. Such bulk-edge correspondence has enabled the creation of robust electronic,…

NaCl crystal nucleation from metastable solutions has long been considered to occur according to a single-step mechanism. Recent experimental observations suggest that NaCl crystals emerge from disordered intermediates which is seemingly at…

Nucleation is generally viewed as a structural fluctuation that passes a critical size to eventually become a stable emerging new phase. However, this concept leaves out many details, such as changes in cluster composition and competing…

We analyze point defect bulk and surface diffusion near the crystal-vacuum interface and show that bulk diffusion is altered by atomic reactions at the surface-vacuum boundary. A new atomic mechanism for point defect generation and…

We theoretically investigate the nucleation of liquid droplets from vapor in the presence of a charged spherical particle. Due to field gradients, sufficiently close to the critical point of the vapor--gas system, the charge destabilizes…

The theoretical description of the heterogeneous nucleation kinetics is presented. This description takes into account the perturbation of the vapor phase initiated by the growing droplets. The form of the density profile around the growing…

Despite its importance in atmospheric science, much remains unknown about the microscopic mechanism of heterogeneous ice nucleation. In this work, we perform hybrid Monte Carlo simulations of the heterogeneous nucleation of ice on a range…