Aggregation, Nucleation and Crystallization—Second Edition

A special issue of Crystals (ISSN 2073-4352). This special issue belongs to the section "Industrial Crystallization".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 March 2025 | Viewed by 109

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Faculty of Physics, Sofia University, 5 James Bourchier Blvd., 1164 Sofia, Bulgaria
Interests: modelling of crystal growth and instabilities; resulting in the formation of various patterns-fractals and dendrites, step bunching and/or meandering; the numerical approaches to these, such as Cellular Automata and Monte Carlo, etc.; classical models and methods from the statistical physics-diffusion, relaxation, percolation, transfer matrix; cloud condensation nuclei
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Guest Editor
Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Aleja Lotnikow 32/46, PL-02-668 Warsaw, Poland
Interests: semiconductor crystals; phase transitions; condensed matter theory; nonequilibrium statistical physics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Following the remarkable success of the first edition of this Special Issue, we are pleased to announce the second edition on the same topic.

The idea behind this Special Issue’s vague title is not only to collect a maximum number of specialized and particular solutions, but to also eventually formulate a minimal number of principal problems.

When speaking of first-order phase transitions characterized by the co-existence of the two phases at the point of transition, it is the distance to the equilibrium measured as the chemical potential difference that drives the available modes of reaction, with the supersaturation sustained during the phase change or defined only in the beginning to follow the spontaneous reaction of the system. What are the principal reaction modes in either of the cases? Is it building aggregates to which arbitrary attachments are allowed and, thus, the rate of entropy production is not a factor of control, or building a well-ordered array of structural units in which each newly arriving one has a special place to build in - the kink position, which provides that the crystal can grow across orders of spatial scale(s) preserving its polygonised shape? When the system chooses between these two routes, from the very beginning or at a later stage? How do limiting factors, such as a slow material supply/slow kinetics, “shape” the growing morphologies along either of the routes?

As a researcher engaged mostly in numerical approaches, I have always been tempted to think that the modeler is a mediator between the theorists and experimentalists as, for the former, we can provide a further check of their fundamental results and, for the latter, we systematically build templates to compare the outcome of their work with the theories. In any case, well-thought-out methodologies, rich and exhaustive monitoring protocols, and their adequate visualization are the key to an accurate communication and, thus, to the resonance with a maximal audience.

How this Special Issue is presented by the end depends on the reaction of the different research communities, whether it will be an aggregate of papers with no apparent coherence or a well-ordered “low-entropy” collection of consistent works—our mission at the journal Crystals is to provide only the nucleus! In any case, we believe that the final result will shine as a beautiful, colorful crystal.

Dr. Vesselin Tonchev
Prof. Dr. Magdalena A. Załuska-Kotur
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • nucleation
  • aggregation
  • crystallization
  • growth modes
  • growth morphologies and the transitions between them

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