Characterization of Preferred Crystal Nucleation Sites on Mica Surfaces

Rates of heterogeneous nucleation can be greatly increased not only through control of the chemistry of a surface, but also of its topography. Following previous work in which we showed that scratching a mica surface significantly enhances crystal nucleation from vapor, we here use a new experimental approach to understand better the effect of topography on crystal nucleation. The compounds carbon tetrabromide, camphor, norbornane, and...