Time-Dependent Nucleation Kinetics

Both Becker-Doring’s and Frenkel-Zeldovich’s treatments, considered thus far, used a theoretical artifice allowing the maintenance of a steady state, i.e. assuring a constant nucleation rate for an infinitely long period of time. In practice, when supersaturation is installed in a system, the size distribution of clusters first changes from equilibrium to that of a metastable state, which further breaks down because of the formation of overcritical nuclei. During their growth, nuclei consume matter from the mother phase, thus lowering the supersaturation. The nucleation rate decreases and finally falls to zero.