Comparison of experiments and modern theories of crystal nucleation

The temperature dependencies of the interfacial free energy γ(T) predicted by modern nucleation theories (density functional and phenomenological models) are confronted with temperature dependent data on crystal nucleation in hydrocarbons, molten metals, and oxide glasses. It is found that the semiempirical density functional approach and the phenomenological diffuse interface theory are fully consistent with the experiment. In contrast, the γ(T) functions from the density functional models developed primarily for densely packed crystal structures could not be brought into agreement with the nucleation data investigated. The possible origin of the success/failure of the theoretical approaches are discussed.