Fig. 2: Nucleation and spinodal growth of molecular adsorption.
From: Elastic heterogeneity governs anomalous dynamic scaling in a soft porous crystal
a Snapshots at t = 16,000, 64,000, 128,000, 256,000 for (T, μ) = (0.1, 0.9). When the desorbed state is metastable, domain nucleation of adsorbates occurs at the corners, while adsorbed domains do not grow at the surface (Supplementary Movie 1). The red arrows point to nucleations at the corners and to a transient adsorption domain in the surface region. b Snapshots at t = 8000, 32,000, 64,000, 128,000 for (T, μ) = (0.1, 0.95). When the chemical potential approaches the spinodal point, surface nucleation also occurs (Supplementary Movie 2), as indicated by red arrows. c Snapshots at t = 4000, 8000, 32,000, 64,000 for (T, μ) = (0.1, 1.2). When the desorbed state is unstable, molecular adsorption exhibits a spinodal-type growth (Supplementary Movie 3). Adsorbed domains grow with a characteristic wavenumber. Because unadsorbed regions between adsorbed domains are softer, creases appear in the unadsorbed regions to reduce elastic energy, as indicated by red arrows. The parameters for all panels are: Lx = 192, K = 3.0, λ = 1.4.
