Thermodynamic studies of levitated microdroplets of highly supersaturated electrolyte solutions

Highly supersaturated electrolyte solutions are studied by employing an electrodynamic levitator trap (ELT) technique. The ELT technique involves containerless suspension of a microdroplet thus eliminating dust, dirt, and container walls which normally cause heterogeneous nucleation. This allows very high supersaturations to be achieved. A theoretical study of the experimental results obtained for the water activity in microdroplets of various electrolyte solutions is based on the development of the Cahn-Hilliard formalism for electrolyte solutions. A correspondence of 96–99% between the theory and experiment for the all solutions studied was achieved and allowed the determination of an analytical expression for the spinodal concentration nspin and its calculation for various electrolyte solutions at 298 K.