Classical nucleation theory for the nucleation of the solid phase of spherical particles with a short-ranged attraction

TL;DR

This paper applies classical nucleation theory to estimate the free-energy barrier for solid phase nucleation in particles with short-range attraction, highlighting the impact of interfacial tension and predicting an upper limit consistent with protein crystallization experiments.

Contribution

It extends classical nucleation theory to systems with short-range attractions, providing new insights into nucleation barriers and limits in such systems.

Findings

Large nucleation barriers due to high interfacial tension

Barrier divergence as attraction range approaches zero

Predicted upper limit aligns with protein crystallization data

Abstract

Classical nucleation theory is used to estimate the free-energy barrier to nucleation of the solid phase of particles interacting via a potential which has a short-ranged attraction. Due to the high interfacial tension between the fluid and solid phases, this barrier is very large, much larger than in hard spheres. It is divergent in the limit that the range of the attraction tends to zero. We predict an upper limit on nucleation in good agreement with the results of experiments on the crystallisation of proteins.