Imaging the Homogeneous Nucleation During the Melting of Superheated Colloidal Crystals
- 5 October 2012
- journal article
- other
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 338 (6103) , 87-90
Abstract
Homogeneous Melting: The nucleation and melting of crystals are primarily driven by surfaces and defects, which can lower the thermodynamic barrier to a phase transition. A harder problem to study is when the transition occurs uniformly. Wang et al. (p. 87 ; see the Perspective by Weeks ) imaged the homogeneous melting of superheated colloidal crystals using a laser to initiate the melting at the interior of the crystal. The authors were then able to track nucleation precursors and nucleus evolution and to find where defects and instabilities limited the homogeneous melting process.Keywords
This publication has 33 references indexed in Scilit:
- Observation of Single Colloidal Platinum Nanocrystal Growth TrajectoriesScience, 2009
- Nature and extent of melting in superheated solids: Liquid-solid coexistence modelPhysical Review B, 2005
- Maximum superheating and undercooling: Systematics, molecular dynamics simulations, and dynamic experimentsPhysical Review B, 2003
- Extreme Superheating and Supercooling of Encapsulated Metals in Fullerenelike ShellsPhysical Review Letters, 2003
- Insights into phase transition kinetics from colloid scienceNature, 2002
- Prediction of absolute crystal-nucleation rate in hard-sphere colloidsNature, 2001
- Methods of Digital Video Microscopy for Colloidal StudiesJournal of Colloid and Interface Science, 1996
- Superheating of Pb(111)Physical Review Letters, 1992
- Modified weighted-density-functional theory of nonuniform classical liquidsPhysical Review A, 1989
- Phase behaviour of concentrated suspensions of nearly hard colloidal spheresNature, 1986