Related papers: Nucleation of colloids and macromolecules in a fin…
Homogeneous nucleation is formulated within the context of fluctuating hydrodynamics. It is shown that for a colloidal or macromolecular system in the strong damping limit the most likely path for nucleation can be determined by gradient…
A recent description of diffusion-limited nucleation based on fluctuating hydrodynamics that extends classical nucleation theory predicts a very non-classical two-step scenario whereby nucleation is most likely to occur in…
A general theory of nucleation for colloids and macromolecules in solution is formulated within the context of fluctuating hydrodynamics. A formalism for the determination of nucleation pathways is developed and stochastic differential…
The classical nucleation theory for homogeneous nucleation is formulated as a theory for a density fluctuation in a supersaturated gas at a given temperature. But Molecular Dynamics simulations reveal that it is small cold clusters which…
It is shown that diffusion-limited classical nucleation theory (CNT) can be recovered as a simple limit of the recently proposed dynamical theory of nucleation based on fluctuating hydrodynamics (Lutsko, JCP 136, 034509 (2012)). The same…
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.…
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…
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…
Recent theories of nucleation that go beyond Classical Nucleation Theory predict that diffusion-limited nucleation of both liquid droplets and of crystals from a low-density vapor (or weak solution) begins with long-wavelength density…
Phase diagrams of some globular proteins have a fluid-fluid transition as well as a fluid-crystal transition. Homogeneous nucleation of the crystal from the fluid phase near the critical point of the fluid-fluid transition is examined. As…
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…
Perturbing fluids of neutrons and protons (nuclear matter) may lead, as the most catastrophic effect, to the rearrangement of the fluid into clusters of nucleons. A similar process may occur in a single atomic nucleus undergoing a violent…
The process of nucleation of vapor bubbles from a superheated liquid and of liquid droplets from a supersaturated vapor is investigated using the Modified-Core van der Waals model Density Functional Theory (Lutsko, JCP 128, 184711 (2008)).…
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…
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…
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 present an experiment on crystallization of packings of macroscopic granular spheres. This system is often considered to be a model for thermally driven atomic or colloidal systems. Cyclically shearing a packing of frictional spheres, we…
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…
The conventional theory of homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation in a supersaturated vapor is tested by Monte Carlo simulations of the lattice gas (Ising) model with nearest-neighbor attractive interactions on the simple cubic lattice.…
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…