Extending classical nucleation theory to confined systems

Abstract

Classical nucleation theory has been recently reformulated based on fluctuating hydrodynamics [J.F. Lutsko and M.A. Durán-Olivencia, J. Chem. Phys. 138, 244908 (2013)]. The present work extends this effort to the case of nucleation in confined systems such as small pores and vesicles. The finite available mass imposes a maximal supercritical cluster size and prohibits nucleation altogether if the system is too small. We quantity the effect of system size on the nuceation rate. We also discuss the effect of relaxing the capillary-model assumption of zero interfacial width resulting in significant changes in the nucleation barrier and nucleation rate.

16 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Classical dynamical density functional theory: from fundamentals to applications
• Classical density functional theory, unconstrained crystallization, and polymorphic behavior
• Dynamical density functional theory for orientable colloids including inertia and hydrodynamic interactions
• Unification of classical nucleation theories via unified Itô-Stratonovich stochastic equation