Kinetics of binary nucleation: Multiple pathways and the approach to stationarity

Abstract

Explicit analytical expressions are obtained for the rate of nucleation over different paths in a binary system. It is shown that anisotropy in reaction rates and anisotropy in the free energy surface can cause nucleation to occur bypassing the saddle point. Homomolecular nucleation is demonstrated to be the natural limit of binary nucleation as the concentration of one component goes to zero. Explicit expressions are also obtained for the time lag of binary nucleation by using the singular perturbation approach. It is shown that the time lag associated with different paths of nucleation is essential in determining the relative importance of different nucleation pathways.