Classical nucleation theory for solute precipitation amended with diffusion and reaction processes near the interface.

Abstract

During the processes of nucleation and growth of a precipitate cluster from a supersaturated solution, the diffusion flux between the cluster and the solution changes the solute concentration near the cluster-solution interface from its average bulk value. This feature affects the rates of attachment and detachment of solute atoms at the interface, and, therefore, the entire nucleation-growth kinetics is altered. Unless quite obvious, this effect has been ignored in classical nucleation theory. To illustrate the results of this approach, for the case of homogeneous nucleation, we calculate the total solubility and the nucleation rate as functions of two parameters of the model (the reduced interface energy and the inverse second Damköhler number), and we compare these results to the classical ones. One can conclude that discrepancies with classical nucleation theory are great in the diffusion-limited regime, when the rate of bulk diffusion is small compared to the rate of interface reactions, while in the opposite interface-limited case they vanish.