Home >> News >> Research Progress

Research Progress

Crystallization Kinetics of Concurrent Liquid-Metastable and Metastable-Stable Transitions, and Ostwald's Step Rule

Date:2015-11-20Shaohua XuSource:

Experimental measurements of colloidal crystallization in a wide range of volume fractions of charged particles were performed to investigate the liquid-metastable-stable transition process. To fit the obtained experimental data, we developed a theoretical model to formulate the kinetics of the concurrent liquid metastable and metastable stable transitions. This model is well-supported by our observations. We found that when the ratio of the metastable stable transition rate to the liquid metastable rate is very large; the metastable state can become undetectable, although it still exists, offering a possible explanation for very few exceptions to Ostwald's step rule.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.langmuir.5b00917

 

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11302226, 11172302, and 11032011).

 

Zhou HW,Qin, Yanming,Xu SH,et al. Crystallization Kinetics of Concurrent Liquid-Metastable and Metastable-Stable Transitions, and Ostwald's Step Rule[J]. LANGMUIR,2015,31(26):7204-7209.