Ligancy effects on nucleation kinetics

Nucleation of particles into crystalline structures can be observed in a wide range of systems from metallic and metal–organic compounds to colloidal and polymeric patch particles. Here, we perform kinetic Monte Carlo simulations to study the nucleation kinetics of particles with different ligancies z at constant supersaturation s. This approach allows one to determine several physico-chemical quantities as a function of s, including the growth probability P(n), the critical nucleus size n*, and the stationary nucleation rate Js. Our numerical results are rationalized in terms of a self-consistent nucleation theory where both n* and Js present a non-trivial dependence on s, but which can be determined from the values of effective z-dependent parameters.