English

Extending classical nucleation theory to confined systems

Soft Condensed Matter 2015-02-20 v1 Statistical Mechanics Chemical Physics

Abstract

Classical nucleation theory has been recently reformulated based on fluctuating hydrodynamics [J.F. Lutsko and M.A. Dur\'{a}n-Olivencia, J. Chem. Phys. 138, 244908 (2013)]. The present work extends this effort to the case of nucleation in confined systems such as small pores and vesicles. The finite available mass imposes a maximal supercritical cluster size and prohibits nucleation altogether if the system is too small. We quantity the effect of system size on the nuceation rate. We also discuss the effect of relaxing the capillary-model assumption of zero interfacial width resulting in significant changes in the nucleation barrier and nucleation rate.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1409.6191,
  title  = {Extending classical nucleation theory to confined systems},
  author = {Miguel A. Durán-Olivencia and James F. Lutsko},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.6191},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

16 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T06:02:25.977Z