Thermodynamics of heterogeneous crystal nucleation in contact and immersion modes

TL;DR

This paper develops a thermodynamic model to explain why heterogeneous crystal nucleation is significantly enhanced in contact mode compared to immersion mode in droplets, highlighting the role of surface and line tension effects.

Contribution

The paper introduces a thermodynamic model comparing nucleation in contact and immersion modes, emphasizing the impact of line tension in nucleation enhancement.

Findings

Droplet surface thermodynamically favors contact mode nucleation.

Line tension effects can be as significant as surface tension in nucleation enhancement.

Model applied to water droplets at 253 K shows surface effects promote contact nucleation.

Abstract

One of most intriguing problems of heterogeneous crystal nucleation in droplets is its strong enhancement in the contact mode (when the foreign particle is presumably in some kind of contact with the droplet surface) compared to the immersion mode (particle immersed in the droplet). Many heterogeneous centers have different nucleation thresholds when they act in contact or immersion modes, indicating that the mechanisms may be actually different for the different modes. Underlying physical reasons for this enhancement have remained largely unclear. In this paper we present a model for the thermodynamic enhancement of heterogeneous crystal nucleation in the contact mode compared to the immersion one. To determine if and how the surface of a liquid droplet can thermodynamically stimulate its heterogeneous crystallization, we examine crystal nucleation in the immersion and contact modes by deriving and comparing with each other the reversible works of formation of crystal nuclei in these cases. As a numerical illustration, the proposed model is applied to the heterogeneous nucleation of Ih crystals on generic macroscopic foreign particles in water droplets at T=253 K. Our results show that the droplet surface does thermodynamically favor the contact mode over the immersion one. Surprisingly, our numerical evaluations suggest that the line tension contribution to this enhancement from the contact of three water phases (vapor-liquid-crystal) may be of the same order of magnitude as or even larger than the surface tension contribution.