Related papers: Heterogeneous nucleation on a completely wettable …
Freezing of water is arguably one of the most common phase transitions on Earth and almost always happens heterogeneously. Despite its importance, we lack a fundamental understanding of what makes substrates efficient ice nucleators. Here…
We study the critical phenomena of the dynamical transition from a metastable state to a stable state in the model of first-order phase transition via two different triggering mechanisms. Three universal stages during the fully nonlinear…
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…
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…
We determined bulk crystal nucleation rates in aqueous suspensions of charged spheres at low metastability. Experiments were performed in dependence on electrolyte concen-tration and for two different particle number densities. The…
The kinetics of nucleation of a core-shell composite nucleus that consists of a core of stable final phase surrounded by a wetting layer of intermediate metastable phase is studied using the kinetic theory of binary nucleation not only in…
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 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…
Supersaturated superfluid 3He-4He liquid mixture, separating into the 3He-concentrated c-phase and 3He-diluted d-phase, represents a unique possibility for studying macroscopic quantum nucleation and quantum phase-separation kinetics in…
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…
Recent work has highlighted roles for thermodynamic phase behavior in diverse cellular processes. Proteins and nucleic acids can phase separate into three-dimensional liquid droplets in the cytoplasm and nucleus and the plasma membrane of…
By comparing the grain sizes under different nucleation conditions, the different nucleation mechanisms were investigated. The primitive nuclei origin at some specific interface, and subsequently disperse into the bulk melt with melt flow.…
The study of neutron rich matter, present in neutron star, proto-neutron stars and core-collapse supernovae, can lead to further understanding of the behavior of nuclear matter in highly asymmetric nuclei. Heterogeneous structures are…
Driven chemical reactions can control the macroscopic properties of droplets, like their size. Such active droplets are critical in structuring the interior of biological cells. Cells also need to control where and when droplets appear, so…
During the processes of nucleation and growth of a precipitate cluster from a supersaturated solution, the diffusion flux between the cluster and the solution changes the solute concentration near the cluster-solution interface from its…
Ice nucleation is greatly important in areas as diverse as climate change, cryobiology, geology or food industry. Predicting the ability of a substrate to induce the nucleation of ice from supercooled water is a difficult problem. Here, we…
Non-stationary rotational surface waves are considered, where the underlying current has constant vorticity. A study is presented on the robustness of a critical layer in the presence of a bottom topography, as well as on its spontaneous…
Over recent years, molecular simulations have provided invaluable insights into the microscopic processes governing the initial stages of crystal nucleation and growth. A key aspect that has been observed in many different systems is the…
We introduce a general formalism to analyze nucleation phenomena in inhomogeneous media which considers the influence of the metastable phase, which is treated as a heat bath in which clusters are embedded, in the dynamics of the nucleation…
Bubble nucleation in liquid confined in nanochannel is studied using molecular dynamics simulations and compared against nucleation in the liquid over smooth (i.e. without confinement). Nucleation is achieved by heating part of a surface to…