The Atomistic Nature of Crystal Growth

Crystal growth and nucleation are treated in the specialized literature in different ways depending on the discipline in question (physics, physical chemistry, chemical engineering) and on the theoretical approaches (atomistic vs continuum approach as regards crystal growth, phase vs chemical concept as regards nucleation). This book relates the different approaches to one another, giving preference to atomistic treatments by the methods of statistical thermodynamics and chemical kinetics. This unified approach also facilitates an understanding of some related phenomena of surface physics, such as adsorption, wetting etc. The book allows research novices and graduate students to get an insight into the physics of the phenomena and to interpret some of the experimental results.

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This textbook is for graduate students and young scientists, who are looking for an introduction to the physics and physical chemistry of crystal growth and nucleation phenomena.

Contenu

1. Introduction.- 2. Thermodynamics.- 3. Statistical Thermodynamics.- 4. Equilibrium Between Large Phases; The Vapor Pressure of Solids.- 5. The Surface Tension of Crystals.- 6. Equilibrium Between Large Three- and Two-Dimensional Phases: Adsorption Phenomena.- 7. Thin Films, Surface Roughening, and Surface Alloys.- 8. Equilibrium Between a Small and a Large Phase.- 9. Equilibrium Shapes of Crystals.- 10. Homogeneous Nucleation; the Phase Approach.- 11. Homogeneous Nucleation; the Chemical Approach.- 12. Nucleation on a Foreign Substrate.- 13. Some Specific Cases of Nucleation.- 14. Time-Dependent Nucleation Kinetics.- 15. Elementary Processes on the Surface of a Crystal.- 16. Growth of a "Perfect" K Face.- 17. Growth of an F Face of a Perfect Crystal.- 18. Growth of an F Face of an Imperfect Crystal.- 19. Conclusion.- Appendices.- A. Legendre Transformations.- B. Method of Lagrange Multipliers.- C. Euler's Theorem.- D. Stirling's Approximation.- E. Maximum Term Approximation.- References.