Heterogeneous Crystal Nucleation: The Effect of Lattice Mismatch

Tóth, Gyula I. and Tegze, György and Pusztai, Tamás and Gránásy, László (2012) Heterogeneous Crystal Nucleation: The Effect of Lattice Mismatch. PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, 108 (2). pp. 1-4. ISSN 0031-9007

Text Toth_PRL_2012.pdf Restricted to Registered users only Download (4MB)

Abstract

A simple dynamical density functional theory is used to investigate freezing of an undercooled liquid in the presence of a crystalline substrate.We find that the adsorption of the crystalline phase on the substrate, the contact angle, and the height of the nucleation barrier are nonmonotonic functions of the lattice constant of the substrate. We show that the free-growth-limited model of particle-induced freezing by Greer et al. [Acta Mater. 48, 2823 (2000)] is valid for larger nanoparticles and a small anisotropy of the interface free energy. Faceting due to the small size of the foreign particle or a high anisotropy decouples free growth from the critical size of homogeneous nuclei.

Actions (login required)

Edit Item