Scaled Vapor-to-Liquid Nucleation in a Lennard-Jones System

Scaling of the homogenous vapor-to-liquid nucleation rate, J, is observed in a model Lennard-Jones (LJ) system. The model uses Monte Carlo simulation-generated small cluster growth to decay rate constant ratios and the kinetic steady-state nucleation rate formalism to determine J at four temperatures below the LJ critical temperature, T-c. When plotted vs the scaled supersaturation, lnS/[T-c/T - 1](3/2), the values of logJ are found to collapse onto a single line. A similar scaling has been observed for the experimental nucleation rate data of water and toluene.