Surface-induced nucleation

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Abstract
When a two-component mixture with an off-critical composition is quenched into the metastable region of its phase diagram, the nucleation barriers may be reduced or eliminated near a substrate that wets the majority phase. The appearance of nuclei and the subsequent domain growth of the nonwetting minority phase can thus occur near such a surface, long before the nucleation and the growth can occur in the bulk. We characterize this surface-induced nucleation process by a numerical study of a model system, and address the issue of experimentally observing it.

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