Crystal nucleation and the crystalmelt interfacial tension in linear hydrocarbons

Recent results on the homogeneous nucleation of crystals in n ‐alkane (C n H 2 n +2 ) melts are used in conjunction with simple nucleation theory to calculate scaled crystal‐melt interfacial tensions, α ( n ), per CH 2 group. α( n ) falls off smoothly and, at first, sharply with n increasing to 12–15, where it levels and remains roughly constant at ca. 0.15 to n = 32, at least. We show that these results are accounted for satisfactorily by the Spaepen‐Meyer negentropic model for the crystal‐melt tension, if it is assumed that there is high probability for the occurrence, within the melt, of planar conformations persisting for 14–15 C atoms.