Classical Nucleation Theory

Abstract

Nucleation refers to the situation when a system (parent phase) is put into a nonequilibrium metastable state. Experimentally it can be achieved by a number of ways (for definiteness we refer to the vapor-liquid transition): e.g. by isothermally compressing vapor up to a pressure $$p^\mathrm v $$exceeding the saturation vapor pressure at the given temperature $$p_{\mathrm{{sat}}}(T)$$.