Molecular Mechanism of Vapor-Liquid Nucleation

Density functional theory of inhomogeneous liquids. III. Liquid-vapor nucleation.

The process of nucleation of vapor bubbles from a superheated liquid and of liquid droplets from a supersaturated vapor is investigated using the modified-core van der Waals model density functional theory [J. F. Lutsko, J. Chem. Phys. 128, 184711 (2008)]. A novel approach is developed whereby nucleation is viewed as a transition from a metastable state to a stable state via the minimum free en...

Scaled vapor-to-liquid nucleation in a Lennard-Jones system.

Scaling of the homogenous vapor-to-liquid nucleation rate, J, is observed in a model Lennard-Jones (LJ) system. The model uses Monte Carlo simulation-generated small cluster growth to decay rate constant ratios and the kinetic steady-state nucleation rate formalism to determine J at four temperatures below the LJ critical temperature, T{c}. When plotted vs the scaled supersaturation, lnS/[T{c}/...

Molecular dynamics simulation of supersaturated vapor nucleation in slit pore

Molecular simulation of the vapor–liquid coexistence of mercury

The vapor–liquid coexistence properties of mercury are determined from molecular simulation using empirical intermolecular potentials, ab initio two-body potentials, and an effective multibody intermolecular potential. Comparison with experiment shows that pair-interactions alone are inadequate to account for the vapor–liquid coexistence properties of mercury. It is shown that very good agreeme...

Phase-equilibrium-dominated vapor-liquid-solid growth mechanism.

The vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth model has been widely used to direct the growth of one-dimensional (1D) nanomaterials, but the origin of the proposed process has not been experimentally confirmed. Here we report the experimental evidence of the origin of VLS growth. Al(69)Ni(31) alloyed particles are used as "catalysts" for growing AlN nanowires by nitridation reaction in N(2)-NH(3) at diff...