The Influence of Nonspherical Shape of Liquid Phase Embryos on the Rate of Homogeneous Nucleation
D. I. Zhukhovitskii
Joint Institute of High Temperatures,
Russian Academy of Sciences,
Izhorskaya ul. 13, Bd. 2, Moscow, 125412 Russia
Abstract—A stationary nucleation in supersaturated vapor is considered for the case, in which the equilibrium shape of liquid phase embryos is different from the spherical one. An expression is obtained for the chemical potential of a cluster of spheroidal shape, whence it follows that cluster surface energy increases faster than its surface area upon the increase in its deformation. The virtual chain model is proposed for the purpose of interpretation of size dependence of the chemical potential. Calculated values of the nucleation rate in cesium vapor prove to be less than it follows from the classical theory, which is in a qualitative agreement with experiment.