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Morphological instability of the dielectric Thomson nuclei
Journal article

Morphological instability of the dielectric Thomson nuclei

Pavel Grinfeld
Physical review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics, v 81(18)
01 May 2010

Abstract

Materials Science Materials Science, Multidisciplinary Physical Sciences Physics Physics, Applied Physics, Condensed Matter Science & Technology Technology
The thermodynamic framework for the analysis of nucleation on charged ions was formulated by J. J. Thomson. It has proven itself a powerful tool for explaining the existing experimental data but it has never been tested in laboratory experiments. Our goal is to aid in potential experimental verification of Thomson's framework by considering the morphological stability of a more realistic nucleus-a dielectric. Thomson provided radial analysis and concluded stability. However, instability results when morphological variations are considered in the undersaturated conducting case. We extend Thomson's analysis and study the morphological stability of a dielectric nucleus. In the weakly supersaturated case, the larger of the two equilibrium spherical nuclei is radially unstable while the smaller one is radially and morphologically stable. In the undersaturated case, there exist spherical equilibrium nuclei that are radially stable (in agreement with Thomson's results) but morphologically unstable. This effect should yield itself to experimental verification.

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Web of Science research areas
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Physics, Applied
Physics, Condensed Matter
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