Determining the nucleation rate from the dimer growth probability

Determining the nucleation rate from the dimer growth probability

Ter Horst, J.H.
Kashchiev, D.

Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering

Process and Energy

2005-09-22

A new method is proposed for the determination of the stationary one-component nucleation rate J with the help of data for the growth probability P2 of a dimer which is the smallest cluster of the nucleating phase. The method is based on an exact formula relating J and P2, and is readily applicable to computer simulations of nucleation. Using the method, the dependence of J on the supersaturation s is determined by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of two-dimensional (2D) nucleation of monolayers on the (100) face of Kossel crystal. The change of J over nearly 11 orders of magnitude is followed and it is found that the classical nucleation theory overestimates the simulation J values by an s-dependent factor. The 2D nucleus size evaluated via the nucleation theorem is described satisfactorily by the classical Gibbs-Thomson equation and its corrected version accounting for the spinodal limit of 2D nucleation.

nucleation
Monte Carlo methods
monolayers

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:956d6d17-4762-4187-9454-3ec393784ac2

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2039076

American Institute of Physics

0021-9606

http://link.aip.org/link/JCPSA6/v123/i11/p114507/s1

Journal of Chemical Physics, 123 (11), 2005

Institutional Repository

journal article

(c) 2005 Ter Horst, J.H.; Kashchiev, D.