Kinetics of Vapor-Solid Phase Transitions: Structure, Growth, and Mechanism

Jiarul Midya and Subir K. Das
Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 165701 – Published 17 April 2017

Abstract

The kinetics of the separation between low and high density phases in a single component Lennard-Jones model is studied via molecular dynamics simulations, at very low temperatures, in the space dimension d=2. For densities close to the vapor branch of the coexistence curve, disconnected nanoscale clusters of the high density phase exhibit essentially ballistic motion. Starting from nearly circular shapes, at the time of nucleation, these clusters grow via sticky collisions, gaining filamentlike nonequilibrium structure at a later time, with a very low fractal dimensionality. The origin of the latter is shown to lie in the low mobility of the constituent particles, in the corresponding cluster reference frame, due to the (quasi-long-range) crystalline order. Standard self-similarity in the domain pattern, typically observed in the kinetics of phase transitions, is found to be absent. This invalidates the common method, that provides a growth law comparable to that in solid mixtures, of quantifying growth. An appropriate alternative approach, involving the fractality, quantifies the growth of the characteristic “length” to be a power law with time, the exponent being strongly temperature dependent. The observed growth law is in agreement with the outcome of a nonequilibrium kinetic theory.

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  • Received 20 April 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.165701

© 2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

  1. Research Areas
Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsStatistical Physics & Thermodynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Jiarul Midya and Subir K. Das*

  • Theoretical Sciences Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Jakkur P.O., Bangalore 560064, India

  • *das@jncasr.ac.in

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Issue

Vol. 118, Iss. 16 — 21 April 2017

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