Related papers: The role of fluctuations in the nucleation process
Despite its fundamental and technological importance, a microscopic understanding of the crystallization process is still elusive. By computer simulations of the hard-sphere model we reveal the mechanism by which thermal fluctuations drive…
We study by computer simulation the nucleation of a supersaturated Lennard-Jones vapor into the liquid phase. The large free energy barriers to transition make the time scale of this process impossible to study by ordinary molecular…
Crystallization, a prototypical self-organization process during which a disordered state spontaneously transforms into a crystal characterized by a regular arrangement of its building blocks, usually proceeds by nucleation and growth. In…
We calculate bubble nucleation rates in a Lennard-Jones fluid through explicit molecular dynamics simulations. Our approach -- based on a recent free energy method (dubbed reweighted Jarzynski sampling), transition state theory, and a…
Colloidal systems offer the ideal conditions to study the nucleation process, both from an experimental viewpoint, due to their relative large size and long time-scales, and from a modeling point of view, due to the tunability of their…
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…
Nucleation in supersaturated vapor is investigated with two series of molecular dynamics simulations in the canonical ensemble. The applied methods are: (a) analysis of critical nuclei at moderate supersaturations by simulating equilibria…
How condensed-matter simulations depend on the number of molecules being simulated ($N$) is sometimes itself a valuable piece of information. Liquid crystals provide a case in point. Light scattering and $2d$-IR experiments on…
We present a phase field theory for binary crystal nucleation. In the one-component limit, quantitative agreement is achieved with computer simulations (Lennard-Jones system) and experiments (ice-water system) using model parameters…
This contribution presents a review of our present theoretical as well as experimental knowledge of different fluctuation observables relevant to nuclear multifragmentation. The possible connection between the presence of a fluctuation peak…
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.…
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 nucleation of a lamellar phase from a supercooled homogeneous phase in a fluctuation driven first-order transition is studied, based on a phenomenological free energy due to Brazovskii. The absence of phase coexistence in the…
Understanding the pathways to crystallization during the deposition of a vapor phase on a cold solid substrate is of great interest in industry, e.g., for the realization of electronic devices made of crystallites-free glassy materials, as…
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…
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…
We investigate vapor homogeneous nucleation in a superheated Lennard Jones liquid with computer simulations. Special simulation techniques are required to address this study since the nucleation of a critical vapor bubble --one that has…
The Kolmogorov-Johnson-Mehl-Avrami model, which is a nucleation and growth poissonian process in space, has been implemented by taking into account spatial correlation among nuclei. This is achieved through a detailed study of a system of…
The nucleation of crystals from the liquid melt is often characterized by a competition between different crystalline structures or polymorphs, and can result in nuclei with heterogeneous compositions. These mixed-phase nuclei can display…
We have investigated by molecular dynamics method the influence of a finite number of particles used in computer simulations on fluctuations of thermodynamic properties. As a case study, we used the two-dimensional Lennard-Jones system. 2D…