James J. De Yoreo and Peter G. Vekilov (2003), Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry 54(1), 57–93 — DOI-10.2113/0540057
Key takeaways
Filed, not read. Known here by what it is standardly cited for.
- In classical nucleation theory, a cluster of a new phase grows only once it passes a critical size. Below that, the cost of its surface outweighs the gain from its bulk, and it dissolves.
- The barrier and the critical size both fall as supersaturation rises, so the nucleation rate depends very steeply on supersaturation.
- A heterogeneous site, such as a surface, an impurity or a seed, lowers the barrier. That is why seeding works.
- Growth after nucleation proceeds at steps and kinks on the crystal surface, and impurities can block it.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-11 to ground CLAIM-176, which holds that recurrence is the nucleation threshold. This review is the physics behind the word “threshold”: below a critical size a cluster dissolves, and a site lowers the barrier. A reading should check whether the analogy holds where it matters most. In the record the threshold is a count of occurrences. In the physics it is a size that depends on supersaturation.
Two readings of 2026-10-11 bear on this chapter. Vekilov 2010 (LIT-919, NOTE-708) confirms that the critical size moves with supersaturation, as Δμ⁻³, and reaches one molecule at a solution–crystal spinodal. It disputes one takeaway above: near the spinodal, it argues, sites act “not by lowering ΔG2*, but by assisting the growth of the ordered clusters”. That is an inference without substrate data, and a reading of this chapter should note the disagreement. Ostwald 1897 (LIT-920, NOTE-709) gives the qualitative ingredients of a critical nucleus (small fragments are more soluble; a fragment can dissolve at one supersaturation and grow at another) and thresholds that are a degree of supersaturation and a seed size. Neither reading supports a threshold that is a count, which bears on this work’s link to CLAIM-176.