Size-Dependent Surface Free Energy and Tolman-Corrected Droplet Nucleation of TIP4P/2005 Water

摘要

Nucleation is the phenomena by which the first embryos of a stable phase emerge from a metastable phase to initiate a phase transition. The kinetics of nucleation are critical for a wide range of industrial and natural processes – ranging from crystallization to cloud formation. Classical nucleation theory (CNT) is commonly employed to predict nucleation rates which, when using the planar surface free energy, typically differ from experimentally measured rates by many orders of magnitude. Since predicted nucleation rates are extremely sensitive to the surface free energy, this discrepancy is often attributed to a size-dependency of the surface free energy – which can differ significantly between nanoscale droplets and a planar interface. Therefore, accounting for a size-dependent surface free energy in CNT may improve predictions of nucleation kinetics.