Jim Lutsko

Jim Lutsko

My interests include Statistical Physics; Crystallization; Density Functional Theory, Simulation methods - particularly rare event techniques, Protein physics, Granular physics and Crystal Growth. I am based in the Physics of Complex Systems and Statistical Mechanics group at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

[077] Kinetic rougheninglike transition with finite nucleation barrier

James F. Lutsko, Vasileios Basios, Gregoire Nicolis, John J. Kozak, Mike Sleutel, and Dominique Maes, "Kinetic rougheninglike transition with finite nucleation barrier", J. of Chemical Physics, 132, 35102 (2010) http://jimlutsko.github.io/files/Lutsko_2010_JCP_1.pdf

Abstract

Recent observations of the growth of protein crystals have identified two different growth regimes. At low supersaturation, the surface of the crystal is smooth and increasing in size due to the nucleation of steps at defects and the subsequent growth of the steps. At high supersaturation, nucleation occurs at many places simultaneously, the crystal surface becomes rough, and the growth velocity increases more rapidly with increasing supersaturation than in the smooth regime. Kinetic roughening transitions are typically assumed to be due to the vanishing of the barrier for two-dimension nucleation on the surface of the crystal. We show here, by means of both analytic mean-field models and kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, that a transition between different growth modes reminiscent of kinetic roughening can also arise as a kinetic effect occurring at finite nucleation barriers.