title: Communication: A dynamical theory of homogeneous nucleation for colloids and macromolecules.
abstract: Homogeneous nucleation is formulated within the context of fluctuating hydrodynamics. It is shown that for a colloidal system in the strong damping limit the most likely path for nucleation can be determined by gradient descent in density space governed by a nontrivial metric. This is illustrated by application to low-density/high-density liquid transition of globular proteins in solution where it is shown that nucleation process involves two stages: the formation of an extended region with enhanced density followed by the formation of a cluster within this region.
authors: Center for Nonlinear Phenomena and Complex Systems, Code Postal 231, Université Libre de Bruxelles,Blvd. du Triomphe, 1050 Brussels, Belgium. jlutsko@ulb.ac.be
authors: James F
authors: JF
authors: Lutsko
mesh_terms: D003102:Colloids / Q000737:chemistry*; D057446:Hydrodynamics; D044367:Phase Transition; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D003102:Colloids; D011506:Proteins