Macroscopic nucleation phenomena in continuum media with long-range interactions
Abstract
Nucleation, commonly associated with discontinuous transformations between metastable and stable phases, is crucial in fields as diverse as atmospheric science and nanoscale electronics. Traditionally, it is considered a microscopic process (at most nano-meter), implying the formation of a microscopic nucleus of the stable phase. Here we show for the first time, that considering long-range interactions mediated by elastic distortions, nucleation can be a macroscopic process, with the size of the critical nucleus proportional to the total system size. This provides a new concept of "macroscopic barrier-crossing nucleation". We demonstrate the effect in molecular dynamics simulations of a model spin-crossover system with two molecular states of different sizes, causing elastic distortions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1201.2495,
title = {Macroscopic nucleation phenomena in continuum media with long-range interactions},
author = {Masamichi Nishino and Cristian Enachescu and Seiji Miyashita and Per Arne Rikvold and Kamel Boukheddaden and Francois Varret},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1201.2495},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
12 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary information accompanies this paper at http://www.nature.com/scientificreports