COLL 456 |
| Alexander V. Neimark and Aleksey Vishnyakov. Center for Modeling and Characterization of Nanoporous Materials, TRI/Princeton, 601 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, NJ 08542 |
| We study the nucleation of a bubble in a metastable LJ fluid confined in a spherical pore with wetting walls by a combination of grand canonical, canonical and gauge cell MC simulation methods. This model system provides ideal conditions to follow the process of homogeneous nucleation in a quasi-equilibrium fashion since the region of achievable metastability can be extended up to the very spinodal and the labile states corresponding to a growing nucleus can be stabilized by imposing certain constraints on density fluctuations. We construct the continuous Van-der-Waals’ type isotherm of confined fluid, in which the unstable backward trajectory corresponds to critical nuclei. The energy barriers of nucleation of nanometer size bubbles are found to be appreciably smaller than the predictions of classical nucleation theory. |
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ACS Award in Colloid and Surface Chemistry Symposium Honoring Clay Radke
Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry |