A parameter to probe microdroplet dynamics and crystal nucleation

R. Grossier (1) , Victoria Tishkova (1) , R. Morin (1) , S. Veesler (1)

1 CINaM - Centre Interdisciplinaire de Nanoscience de Marseille

We present a simple and efficient digital-image processing method to simultaneously monitor the contraction of a statistically relevant number of microdroplets of the same size and the nucleation of single salt crystals inside. Each individual microdroplet image is reduced to a scalar, standard deviation sigma, and overall microdroplet dynamics is monitored using standard-deviation time-evolution plots. It is shown that this approach makes it possible to measure the nucleation time and also that microdroplets interact via water diffusion dynamics. This effect actually decreases the nucleation rate, contrary to previous findings. This " sigma approach " can be compared to recording the order parameter in phase transition, which makes it ideal for studying dynamics of systems where images are the primary outputs.

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]; Matériaux

R. Grossier, Victoria Tishkova, R. Morin, S. Veesler. A parameter to probe microdroplet dynamics and crystal nucleation. AIP Advances, 2018, 8, pp.075324. ⟨10.1063/1.5034443⟩. ⟨hal-01744090v1⟩