Initiation of Spherulite Growth: The Case of Concurrent Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Nucleation

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Abstract
Direct determination of the rate of homogeneous spherulite initiation requires the subdivision of the melt into a large enough number of droplets so that all undesired nucleation catalysts (heterogeneities, motes, etc.) will be confined to a relatively small number of them. If the undesired heterogeneities nucleate very rapidly, the droplets free of them will freeze at a rate proportional to their volumes and the inherent (homogeneous) nucleation frequency per unit volune. In many cases, however, the time‐dependent freezing process is pseudohomogeneous, i.e., the result of concurrent homogeneous and heterogeneous (but sporadic or nearly sporadic) nucleation. A method is presented for analyzing data corresponding to this case and for determining the limits within which the droplet nucleation experiment can be expected to yield fruitful results.

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