Related papers: Maximum Likelihood Analysis of Reaction Coordinate…
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…
Crystallization is a fundamental process in materials science, providing the primary route for the realization of a wide range of new materials. Crystallization rates are also considered to be useful probes of glass-forming ability. At the…
The formation of clusters in supercooled liquids close to the glass transition temperature is described by rate equations in which the coefficients are determined on physical grounds rather than in terms of thermodynamic quantities such as…
Under sufficient permanent random covalent bonding, a fluid of atoms or small molecules is transformed into an amorphous solid network. Being amorphous, local structural properties in such networks vary across the sample. A natural order…
We study crystallization in a model system for eicosane (C20) by means of molecular dynamics simulation and we identify the microscopic mechanisms of homogeneous crystal nucleation and growth. For the nucleation process, we observe that…
A few experiments have already detected the presence of icosahedral superclusters in undercooled liquids, confirming a possible homogeneous nucleation of such entities as suggested by Franck. These superclusters survive in melts above the…
Metastable polymorphs often result from the interplay between thermodynamics and kinetics. Despite advances in predictive synthesis for solution-based techniques, there remains a lack of methods to design solid-state reactions targeting…
First order phase transitions in general proceed via nucleation of bubbles. A theoretical basis for the calculation of the nucleation rate is given by the homogeneous nucleation theory of Langer and its field theoretical version of Callan…
Colloidal model systems allow studying crystallization kinetics under fairly ideal conditions with rather well characterized pair interactions and minimized external influences. In complementary approaches therefore experiment, analytic…
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.…
Understanding polymorph selection in atomic and molecular systems and its control through thermodynamic conditions and external factors (such as seed characteristics) is fundamental to the design of targeted materials and holds great…
The role of saturation for cluster formation in finite systems such as atomic nuclei is analyzed by considering three length-scale ratios, and performing deformation-constrained self-consistent mean-field calculations. The effect of…
The thermodynamics and kinetics of crystallization of nanoparticles, as opposed to bulk phases, may be influenced by surface and size effects. We investigate the importance of such factors in the crystallization process of gold, silver, and…
The crystal nucleation from liquid in most cases is too rare to be accessed within the limited timescales of the conventional molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Here, we developed a "persistent embryo" method to facilitate crystal…
We report a new mechanism for nucleation in a monolayer of hexagonally packed monodisperse droplet arrays. Upon cooling, we observe solidified droplets to nucleate their supercooled neighbors giving rise to an autocatalytic-like mechanism…
Order parameter fluctuations (the largest cluster size distribution) are studied within a three-dimensional bond percolation model on small lattices. Cumulant ratios measuring the fluctuations exhibit distinct features near the percolation…
We discuss the structure of the equation of motion that governs nucleation processes at first order phase transitions. From the underlying microscopic dynamics of a nucleating system, we derive by means of a non-equilibrium projection…
We performed dynamic simulations of spheres with short-range attractive interactions for many values of interaction strength and range. Fast crystallization occurs in a localized region of this parameter space, but the character of…
We report on a large scale computer simulation study of crystal nucleation in hard spheres. Through a combined analysis of real and reciprocal space data, a picture of a two-step crystallization process is supported: First dense, amorphous…
We performed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the nucleation of water vapor in order to test nucleation theories. Simulations were performed for a wide range of supersaturation ratios (S = 3-25) and water temperatures (Tw=300-390K).…