A microscopic approach to crystallization: challenging the classical/non-classical dichotomy

TL;DR

This paper extends a hydrodynamic and density functional theory framework to describe the dynamics of non-classical nucleation in crystallization, revealing that classical nucleation theory can sometimes approximate non-classical pathways but may also fail.

Contribution

It introduces a dynamic extension of a non-classical nucleation framework, providing insights into the similarity of early nucleation pathways and the applicability of classical theory.

Findings

Nucleation pathways of droplets and crystals are similar early on.

Size of critical clusters remains the main order parameter.

Classical nucleation theory can approximate some non-classical nucleation results.

Abstract

Recently, it was shown that a theoretical description of nucleation based on fluctuating hydrodynamics and classical density functional theory can be used to determine non-classical nucleation pathways for crystallization (Lutsko, Sci. Adv. 5, eaav7399 (2019)). The advantage of the approach is that it is free of any assumptions regarding order parameters and that requires no input other than molecular interaction potentials. We now extend this fundamental framework so as to describe the dynamics of non-classical nucleation. We use it to study the nucleation of both droplets and crystalline solids from a low-concentration solution of colloidal particles using two different interaction potentials. We find that the nucleation pathways of both droplets and crystals are remarkably similar at the early stages of nucleation until they diverge due to a rapid ordering along the solid pathways in line with the paradigm of "non-classical" crystallization. We compute the unstable modes at the critical clusters and find that despite the non-classical nature of solid nucleation, the size of the nucleating clusters remains the principle order parameter in all cases supporting a "classical" description of the {\it dynamics} of crystallization. We show that nucleation rates can be extracted from our formalism in a systematic way. Our results suggest that in some cases, despite the non-classical nature of the nucleation pathways, classical nucleation theory can give reasonable results for solids but that there are circumstances where it may fail. This contributes a nuanced perspective to recent experimental and simulation work suggesting that important aspects of crystal nucleation can be described within a classical framework.