Kinetics of nucleation and crystallization

A link between nucleation models and experimental kinetic measurements has been established as a result of the present studies of the general transient kinetics of nucleation in the barrier region and beyond. Based on the new results on the transient kinetics of nucleation, a theoretical basis for measuring directly the nucleation energy barrier and its temperature dependency is developed, an approach for determining the interfacial atomic transfer mechanism in the nucleation process is presented and some new experimental strategies for conducting nucleation and crystallization kinetic measurements are outlined. A new mathematical approach developed for solving the nucleation kinetic equation in the barrier region and beyond is described. The results are also presented for the nucleation kinetics in some spatially inhomogeneous systems where there are mechanisms for subcritical clusters loss from the system. In addition, a chemical-nucleation model developed for the cluster formation in a chemically reacting system is outlined.