Repeated nucleation in an undercooled tin droplet by fast scanning calorimetry

The heterogeneous nucleation kinetics of a single undercooled tin droplet was measured at a cooling rate of 1 X 10(4) K/s by fast scanning non-adiabatic calorimetry. The nucleation rates were obtained by a statistical analysis of nearly 1000 identical events. Applying classical heterogeneous theory in conjunction with the available thermodynamic data, it was found that a single mechanism spherical cap model was capable of describing the experimental data. And the present study shows that fast scanning calorimetry, allows studying nucleation in micron sized droplets and may open a way for detailed investigations of the influence of droplet size to discriminate surface and bulk nucleation. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.