Eur. Phys. J. D 47, 373-377 (2008)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2008-00053-y

Melting, freezing and nucleation in nanoclusters of potassium chloride

III – Modelling crystal growth dynamics

Centre of Molecular Sciences and Materials, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisboa Campo Grande, Bloco C8, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal

Corresponding author: ^a fsilva@fc.ul.pt

Received: 4 January 2008
Revised: 3 March 2008
Published online: 21 March 2008

Abstract

In a recent work we have reported molecular dynamics simulations for nucleation and crystal growth dynamics in unconstrained droplets of KCl. In the present article, we propose a model for the crystal growth dynamics inside unconstrained nanoscale systems. Despite of being a semi-stationary approximation, the main trends of the crystal growth behaviour are explained by the model. On the absence of available experimental data, the model is tested against simulation results with fairly good accordance.