Extension of Classical Nucleation Theory for Uniformly Sheared Systems

Abstract

Nucleation is an out-of-equilibrium process, which can be strongly affected by the presence of external fields. In this letter, we report a simple extension of classical nucleation theory to systems submitted to an homogeneous shear flow. The theory involves accounting for the anisotropy of the critical nucleus formation, and introduces a shear rate dependent effective temperature. This extended theory is used to analyze the results of extensive molecular dynamics simulations, which explore a broad range of shear rates and undercoolings. At fixed temperature, a maximum in the nucleation rate is observed, when the relaxation time of the system is comparable to the inverse shear rate. In contrast to previous studies, our approach does not require a modification of the thermodynamic description, as the effect of shear is mainly embodied into a modification of the kinetic prefactor and of the temperature.

6 pages, 4 figures

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• Homogeneous Nucleation of Sheared Liquids: Advances and Insights from Simulations and Theory
• Excellent glass former Ni${}_{62}$Nb${}_{38}$ crystallizing under combined shear and ultra-high pressure
• Morphology of Critically-Sized Crystalline Nuclei at Shear-Induced Crystal Nucleation in Amorphous Solid
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• Shear Melting at the Crystal-Liquid Interface: Erosion and the Asymmetric Suppression of Interface Fluctuations
• Three-Particle Correlations in Liquid and Amorphous Aluminium
• Cavity nucleation in single-component homogeneous amorphous solids under negative pressure