Nucleation

In crystallization from solution, nucleation plays a decisive role in determining the crystal form, size distribution, shape and purity and therefore understanding the fundamentals of nucleation is crucial to achieve control over these properties. Current work in the group centers around nucleation in confinement, nucleation of biological macromolecules , nuclelation inhibition and templated nucleation.

Schematic representation of the free energy profiles for two competing nuclei corresponding to polymorphs A and B, over a range of characteristic lengths. The thermodynamically preferred phase corresponds to the lowest free energy, which can be adjusted by placing size constraints upon the growing nuclei through nanoconfinement. Kinetics and thermodynamics intersect at the critical size; at the critical size, the difference in the kinetic barrier for the two polymorphs is tantamount to the difference in their thermodynamic stability at this size. This ranking can persist beyond the critical size but reverse to the stability ranking of the bulk as the size increases. LINK