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.

12 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary information accompanies this paper at http://www.nature.com/scientificreports

References in corpus (2)

• Simple Two-Dimensional Model for the Elastic Origin of Cooperativity among Spin States of Spin-Crossover Complexes
• Realization of the mean-field universality class in spin-crossover materials

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Effect of the short-range interaction on critical phenomena in elastic interaction systems
• Nontrivial phase diagram for an elastic interaction model of spin crossover materials with antiferromagnetic-like short-range interactions
• The Origin of Mean-Field Behavior in an Elastic Ising Model
• Reversal of magnetisation in Ising ferromagnet by the field having gradient
• Delayed nucleation in lipid particles
• Apparent bistability from weak long-range interactions