Evidence for out-of-equilibrium crystal nucleation in suspensions of oppositely charged colloids

Details Evidence for out-of-equilibrium crystal nucleation in suspensions of oppositely charged colloids Evidence for out-of-equilibrium crystal nucleation in suspensions of oppositely charged colloids

2007-07-27

arxiv.org/abs/0707.4114v1

Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 055501, 2007

Physics

Condensed Matter

Soft Condensed Matter

4 pages 3 figures. Accepted Phys. Rev. Lett

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.055501

We report a numerical study of the rate of crystal nucleation in a binary suspension of oppositely charged colloids. Two different crystal structures compete in the thermodynamic conditions under study. We find that the crystal phase that nucleates is metastable and, more surprisingly, its nucleation free energy barrier is not the lowest one. This implies that, during nucleation, there is insufficient time for sub-critical nuclei to relax to their lowest free-energy structure. Such behavior is in direct contradiction with the common assumption that the phase that crystallizes most readily is the one with the lowest free-energy barrier for nucleation. The phenomenon that we describe should be relevant for crystallization experiments where competing solid structures are not connected by an easy transformation.

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